Citrix Acquires App-DNA

It is Citrix Synergy in Barcelona at present and as ever Citrix have come to the table with a number of product updates, product advancements and news of acquisitions.  One of them made yesterday was the acquisition of App-DNA.

App-DNA provide application analysis, assessment and remediation software under the name of AppTitude.  The product assists in migrating users from Windows XP through to Windows 7 and caters for understanding the issues of upgrading Internet Explorer on Wed Based Applications.

Citrix is planning to integrate the AppTitude technology in the Citrix Desktop Transformation Model, offering assessment functionality, remediation of incompatible applications and automated application packaging to MSI, App-V or Citrix XenApp formats.

If you are considering desktop migration either to a physical Windows 7 desktop or to a virtual desktop environment you really should leverage App-DNA to understand where your application issues are and how they may impact the scale of the project.

Talk to us and see how we can support your desktop transformation project.

Gartner’s Strategic Technology Trends 2012

Gartner has recently updated it’s strategic technology trends for 2012 and comes at a critical junction for IT departments as they get to terms with their IT Budgets, Architecture Upgrades and the ever growing demands placed on business by consumerisation.

What's a "strategic technology"?  Strategic technology is one that has the potential for "significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years."

So what made the cut and what didn’t?

1. Media tablets
2. Mobile-centric applications and interfaces
3. Social and contextual user experience
4. Application stores and marketplace
5. The Internet of everything
6. Next-generation analytics
7. Big data
8. In-memory computing
9. Extreme low-energy servers
10. Cloud computing.

Many of these go together. Such as contextual and social user experience and Internet of Things depend on one another. App stores and marketplaces and tablet computing go hand-in-hand.

So do you agree?  Is there anything on here that you planning on doing and is there something missing from this list?  It would be interesting to see.

VMware and NVIDIA collaborate to improve VDI performance

VMware and Nvidia are collaborating to implement the Quadro's Virtual Graphics platform on VMware View.  Since the advent of server-based computing, handling graphics-intensive tasks has always been a challenge, but performance has gradually improved.

Graphically intensive applications (CAD and Media Rendering) will be accessible from almost any device without being tied to a fixed location.

The solution uses a dedicated Nvidia Quadro card on the host and a graphics driver in the virtual desktop. There isn’t a firm date for when the View and Quadro Virtual Graphics will start shipping, but VMware is hoping that some users will be able to start testing before the end of the year.

HP's new VirtualSystem for Microsoft simplifies the cloud journey.

HP has announced new servers that come pre-configured with Microsoft software to help companies deploy virtualised servers more quickly.

HP's VirtualSystem for Microsoft includes HP servers and Microsoft's Hyper-V , and simplifies the deployment of applications including SharePoint, Exchange Server, and SQL Server.  The environment naturally can be managed using HP's Insight Control and Microsoft System Center.

The servers provide a path to help customers build private and public clouds and link them together as a hybrid cloud.  VirtualSystem for Microsoft uses the same architecture as the HP CloudSystem, which combines storage, networking, and servers to reduce latency when scaling configurations in cloud deployments.

HP and Microsoft are trying to make it easier for customers to move applications to the cloud,

VirtualSystem for Microsoft will be available in November priced from about.  It will be offered in two models -- the VS1, for companies that want to host about 750 virtual machines, and the VS2, for companies hosting about 2,500 virtual machines.

VS1 can be configured with up to eight HP ProLiant DL380 G7 servers, 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet connections, and a P4500 LeftHand SAN (storage area network) that scales from 14TB to 57TB.

VS2 can have up to 12 HP ProLiant BL460c G7 servers, multiple network and storage connectivity modules, and P4800 LeftHand SAN that can expand to 84TB.

VMware Upgrade their View Client

 

VMware have just released several new mobile clients for View.  Hot on the heals of the new iPAD client from Citrix last week VMware have released a new View client that has some well overdue and innovative features.

The main new feature is that the client now supports iOS multitasking, in layman terms it means that you can flip between View desktops and local applications and still have a connected View desktop.

Naturally through the close links with RSA, there is now support for soft tokens in the View client itself.  A mobile device really should have a mobile soft token support for 2 factor authentication and at last we now have it.

Hot on the new capability of iOS 5, View can now leverage Apple’s AirPlay to allow your iPAD to connect wirelessly to a large form factor display.  Naturally you will need an Apple TV to connect this to wirelessly but we think this is a neat solution.

The Android client has now come out of beta mode and is now fully supported so that’s good news for honeycomb based tablets such as the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet.

It is great news for those businesses that are looking to adopt tablets in the enterprise and are looking to get a faster return on their investment through integrating with VDI implementations.

Things just got better

Sometimes it difficult to see how something so easy could get even easier, and today Citrix have done just that by bringing their Kaviza acquisition into the fold and adding more functionality and a new name ‘Citrix VDI in a Box’.

This is a version 5 release of the VDI solution aimed at the SMB marketplace following the shrewd acquisition Citrix made earlier this year of Kaviza.  Some people questioned the logic of the acquisition including us.  But from getting to know the product, the issues that our SMB customer base face and how this solves many of the VDI hurdles it is crystal clear why Citrix made this move.

VDI-in-a-Box offers an all-in-one VDI solution that doesn’t require shared storage and dedicated load balanced connection brokers. Customers just have to deploy the virtual appliance on their hypervisor of choice and they are ready to go.The solution can scale simply through adding more servers to the grid.  Once you know your users to server ratio you have a simple internal SKU that you can align a cost to.  Adding more users becomes easier to forecast and budget for.

Version 5 provides the following new features:

• Support for the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor, besides the already existing support for Citrix XenServer and VMware ESXi
• Expanded set of wizards to cover every frequent operation
• Support for Citrix HDX providing:
• Real-time audio stream, which reduces network latency for voice traffic
• Webcam compression
• Graphics command redirection, decreasing bandwidth with 33 percent
• Intelligent local rendering.

New Citrix Receiver for iPAD

Citrix has a new update of Citrix Receiver for iPad, v5.0.

The latest client packs a lot of great new features, these are:

iOS 5 Support
Universal iOS Application Support
Several HDX Graphics enhancements
40% Less bandwidth consumption
50% Faster Application Launch times
XenApp Fundamentals 6 Support
Session Sharing and Connection Center Support
Simplified and Universal Receiver User Interface
High resolution Support (up to 1600 x 1200)
Fine-tuned and improved session controls
Improved External Keyboard Support
Fine-tuned and improved gestures
Improved setup auto-discovery
Enhanced Access Gateway Support
Stability and security enhancements

This represents a great new set of features for a great enterprise ready tablet, want help on configuring and integrating your iPad into business? Then contact us at tablet@equanet.co.uk

Citrix acquires another cloud company

Citrix has acquired ShareFile in an attempt to break into the cloud-based data sharing market.

Many users now have a multitude of different devices which is putting new demands on how data is stored and shared, giving rise to the personal cloud, according to Citrix.  And is a very crowded market now with the likes of Dropbox, iCloud and Box.Net to name but a few.

The service allows enterprises to upload files to its centralised cloud storage, which can then be accessed by anyone who has the right credentials using a PC, smartphone or tablet.

ShareFile offers its service at four standard price plans: Basic, Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Gold. They differ in the number of allowed employee accounts, monthly data transfer volume, storage volume and functionality that is included. For example, the Professional plan costs $59.95 per month and includes 10 employee accounts, 10GB of transferred data and 10GB of storage. They all include unlimited accounts for clients and partners.

This acquisition will allow Citrix to realise it’s "follow-me-data" strategy, which aims to allow business users to access their content from anywhere over any device and any network.

Steve Jobs and Apple –The Pioneers of Consumerisation?

As I sit here eagerly for the last 2 hours or so downloading the latest iteration of Apples operating system; iOS 5  (which by the way is telling me has over 1 hour to wait) I got to thinking surely the movement of consumerisation is largely an offshoot of the innovation that Steve Jobs and Apple crave on.  Whether or not it was intentional is another discussion, but nonetheless the iPAD represents a desirable device that has found its way into many enterprises and will continue to do so.

First was the iPod (That’s next on my upgrade).  Which proved massively popular and then went off the scale with a clever port of iTunes onto Windows desktops and the millions of users who could access the service. The natural extension of this was the iPhone (That is after the iPOD upgrade), which only had an app store developed for it in 2008!  Once it became apparent the reach that the App Store would have every mainstream vendor clamored to get their applications to the masses.  More interestingly the more nimble organisations found ways to get their innovative cloud applications to the consumer and hence into businesses such as Dropbox, Box.net and Evernote.

After the iPhone came the iPAD, a natural branch of a fantastically successful phone but in a slightly larger form factor.  Suddenly the execs of the business were entering the business with tablet devices asking how they get them on the network, why won’t our productivity applications work with it and why is the wireless not in the right areas.  This brought about a whole project in systems integration.

I come back to my original question – was this a planned shift in workforce devices?  I doubt it, but it has happened.  And the fact that my download of iOS 5 is still saying one hour remaining tells me that the world of business is going to have a whole new set of capabilities tomorrow morning in the office.

Equanet are experts in tablet deployment, integration and strategy.  We can help you develop your vision, deploy that vision and manage that vision.  Interested in seeing how tablets can impact your business, then contact us.

Oh, and I now have 45 mins left…..