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There has been a lively discussion going on in the VDI related Blogosphere kicked off here by Dan Feller and Brian Madden here. This issue of whether or not to allow "User Installed apps "exemplifies the dichotomy that IT Pros struggle with architecting a system that meets the business challenges of security, cost, and compliance plus at the same time satisfying the needs of knowledge workers with high demands and expectations.
As VDI expands from task oriented deployments to broader general purpose PC replacement scenarios this issue is likely to gain more attention. Most companies don't condone user installed apps but many do allow users to have administrator rights to their work PC and may look the other way regarding what an individual installs on their own. When it comes time to virtualize everything for VDI however now they need to pay attention. But how big an issues it ?
Dan indicates from an IT best practice standpoint it is better to develop an effective workflow that speeds and automates the IT approval, packaging, and delivery of new apps that individuals need to be productive. Will knowledge workers accept this solution ? As the commenter's indicate, this works for some but not all situations. Brian Madden proposed another alternative, just give the power users a second VM for unique/personal apps. Keep the corporate VM pristine under IT control and let users have their own separate sandbox if warranted. This may be a bit of a brute force solution but would work If the costs are justified. I like it because I do it myself now, although I use lab VM's as a sandbox vs IT delivered VM's. The commenter's however also found issues with this solution due to costs plus compliance issues about what SW/data gets installed into those user VM's. Some offered up BYOC as a solution if users really needed their own environment. There are many 3rd parties looking to enable User Installed apps as well, however even if the technical challenges are solved will IT support/endorse/allow this? Let me put forth another option/proposal, sometimes when I'm on a system thats not mine or a thin client I connect to my home PC via GoToMyPC and keep it running as long as I need it. This gives me access to apps that are not provided by IT, I have all the freedom to install what ever I want and IT doesn't need to deal with infrastructure costs or compliance issues. Yes this assumes that the power user has their own powered on PC and GoToMyPC does not currently have all of the features I might want for this solution, but you get the idea.
Let us know what you situations you face, is it a problem and do you see a solution for it? If you have another idea or comments on the above, please share it.
Congratulations to Simon Crosby for having his blog recognized by Datamation as one of the Top 40 Enterprise Tech Industry Blogs. Datamation annually compiles a list of the top 200 Tech Blogs categorized into multiple categories including our Enterprise software segment. No doubt Simon's technical insight and opinionated positions have put his blog on the short list of many IT pro's and industry watchers.
To Quote Datamation:
" Crosby, CTO of Citrix's Data Center and Cloud Division, is a fierce partisan for the Xen virtualization software. He's also a canny and witty analyst of cloud computing and the larger tech landscape."
Take a look you may find some other interesting Blogs to follow as well.
The recent announcement of the Terremark Cloud offering has raised significant attention especially because of the competitive pricing and EC2 like features of elastic capacity and hourly charges with no commitment. On the surface the Terremark entry price of $0.036 per hour seems very low compared to Amazon EC2 at $0.10 but it's worth picking a few examples to provide a more apples to apples comparison.
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Not included in the comparison is the difference in storage costs which can be small or very significant depending on the circumstance. Amazon provides up to 160 GB of instance storage for a small image or 850 GB for a large included in the hourly cost. If you have only a small instance say 10GB that adds $ 2.50 to the monthly price at Terremark ( @ .25/GB ) however of you needed the 850 GB included in the Amazon Large image that would add $ 212 to the monthly Terremark costs. Also not included is bandwidth costs, however both charge the same $0.17 GB for data transfer out . ( Although Amazon charges $ 0.10/GB for data in vs Terremark $ 0.17 data in ).
Some the bigger differences will more likely depend on how the VMs are utilized. The numbers stated above assume a full month of 24x31 operation. With Amazon EC2 it's possible to save in S3 ( bundle in Amazon terms ) an instance and then shut down ( terminate ) the VM and the billing stops. With Terremark however although you can shut down the VM, the hourly charges do not stop. Only deleting the VM ends the billing, there does not appear to be an option of saving with the hourly charges turned off and allowing a new instance from the saved image to be started at a later time. This appears to be a big advantage for Amazon although I need to learn more about the Terremark offering to fully appreciate the capabilities.
Certainly economics is not the only factor in selecting a Cloud infrastructure provider. Vendor Lock-in and VM portablity often come up as concerns. Security is also a factor in regard to Cloud computing and this was a motivator for Amazons recent Virtual Private Cloud offering which provides a dedicated VPN connection from a customer premise to an isolated Cloud inside the Amazon infrastructure. I also have to admit I was impressed with a recent tour of the Terremark data center in Miami , this place was like a high tech Fort Knox when it came to security. The entire topic of Cloud security is worthy of specialized consideration not covered in this simple comparison.
Ease of use is another consideration that is worth evaluating. The Amazon Web Console is limited in function but easy to use plus includes access to many partner and community provided ( including Citrix C3 Lab ) templates that are prebuilt and ready to launch. In Amazon EC2 for example its now possible signup and launch your own XenApp server in as little a 15 minutes.
Terremark also provides a web base console that looks straight forward however I have not used it myself yet. Terramark does not provide the same portfolio of 3rd party templates however they do provide more granularity in the size of VMs and RAM plus they offer multiple versions of Windows Server.
As the options for Cloud Computing continue to expand the economic analysis of Cloud vs Premise will extend to Cloud vs Cloud, as Service Providers continue to provide dynamic cloud type offerings.
Cloud Economics 101 Part 1 - Premise vs Cloud vs Colo
Cloud Economics 101 Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud
Cloud Economics 101 Part 3 - Amazon Reserved Pricing
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The Amazon Web Services (AWS) announcement of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering has just made Cloud Computing more attractive to the enterprise. Most companies I talk with are interested in the "Cloud", but beyond a few SaaS apps and perhaps some dev/test they are not ready for any big change to their corporate IT infrastructure. On the other hand many of those same companies are currently or projected to be capacity limited in their own data center based on space or power limitations.
Many companies will opt to move or expand into a Co-lo (Co-location) facility which provides dedicated space, power and bandwidth. This solves the space and power problem but most of the same costs of computing are just moved to a remote facility. The expensive data center facility cost is shared among other companies but the Server, Storage and Networking are all dedicated. The promise of the Cloud and particularly IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) like Amazon EC2 is sharing computing and facility costs, having capacity available on demand, and only paying for what is used.
The obstacles to IaaS offerings that I hear most often include security concerns and the desire keep the corporate data and or legacy infrastructure in place. Making a massive move from premise to Cloud is not desired or warranted. On the other hand enabling a Premise Plus Cloud solution in a secure fashion and using it only for expansion or overflow capacity could be appealing for many companies. Essentially this is what Amazon is offering with VPC, a dedicated secure network extending from a company data center into the Amazon Cloud with isolated VM's available on demand.
For Citrix Customers this could be particularly attractive for expanding XenApp farms or centralizing new applications on XenApp without the prerequisite facility and capital costs. Customers can bring their own XenApp licensees to VPC or point back to existing license server on premise. We have been collaborating with Amazon AWS to build and test XenApp servers in VPC to validate and number of scenarios and use cases. In addition we have made dedicated Amazon Machine Image ( AMI ) templates available with XenApp 5 preinstalled and ready to launch. Citrix C3 Blueprints are also now available to assist companies that want to start to evaluate the new offering. ( Note: the service is currently in Beta )
For Citrix this announcement represents another progressive move as a leader and enabler of Cloud Computing. Amazon EC2 based on the Xen Hypervisor has already made EC2 ubiquitous with start-ups and the undisputed leader in Public Clouds, VPC with XenApp now represents a significant opportunity for Enterprise IT. The Citrix Cloud Center ( C3 ) portfolio will continue to enable IT and Cloud providers to exploit the promise of the Cloud, stay tuned..
The question of VDI use cases, customer awareness, and Desktop Virtualization has been a hot topic lately at Citrix. Harry Labana's blog post did a great job describing the differences in Desktop Virtualization and Server Virtualization. In addition to the positive reviews a few commenter's have also brought up some scenarios we have been considering but have not made available to date. Specifically we have been discussing ways to make HDX more pervasive and useful to IT Pro's and users. HDX has significant benefits and we want the broader industry to try it out and get a taste of XenDesktop.
Many in the community may recall a Citrix project called PortICA which led to a component of XenDesktop providing a direct ICA connection from a Client OS ( XP or Vista ) to any endpoint with the ICA client. Outside of Citrix developers & testers ( and a few others 
) who find this very useful, we have not opened up this stand alone capability to the world. If we did make this available, meaning an MSI including the enhanced HDX features that could be installed inside a client OS which could connect directly ( no broker ) to any device with the Citrix Receiver and proper network configuration. The question is what would you use it for ? Would this lead to increased XenDesktop adoption? Some of the XenDesktop product and demo scenarios we have considered or heard are listed below. Please let us know your vote and help describe some new use cases as well.
( Note that this is simply a survey and does not imply what plans we may or may not have )
Also check out Brian Madden's post on the topic and additional commenters views.
In case you have ever needed to administer a XenApp server but were not near a PC, this app is for you. In the past this typically meant a drive to work or home, then boot-up the PC launch the AMC, you know the gig. Now there is a better way, if you haven't found it already there is a free Mobile Console app from Extentrix that allows an Admin to see who's logged on, log them off, reset the session, or send a message. All without leaving your chair or even booting a PC. The app UI is designed to work with the iPhone, but because it's actually a Windows app running on XenApp you can also access it from any device that has a Citrix Receiver ( or ICA Client ). You can download it free here .
Aside from solving your problem to administer XenApp servers, think about what other apps that could be built or modified to fit a mobile form factor and delivered to your users with the same infrastructure you already have. For more ideas check out the XenApp CDN pages for tips on building custom mobile apps for XenApp. What mobile app do your users need ?
Today we have added a new feature to the Citrix: Support, CDN, and Community Forums, that allows anyone making a forum entry to automatically post the question or answer as a Tweet to the Twitter universe. This means that anyone following the Citrix twitter accounts ( CitrixKCforums or CitrixCommunity ) or searching a keyword will get real time visibility to the latest forum discussions and a link back to the forum post. Now you won't be limited to forum surfers or RSS readers to get your question/answer out to the world. And hopefully those real time questions will get real time answers for everyone to view. Plus, if everyone in the Community starts using this feature the wealth of knowledge that goes back and forth in Twitter messages could be accumulated in the Citrix Forums for longevity and search-ability.
So the next time you have a technical or community question, don't just Tweet it, ForumTweet it from the Citrix Forums and let's see the replies fly in.
Also please follow :
@CitrixKCForums - The Citrix Support Forums ( http://forums.citrix.com/support )
@CitrixCommunity - The Community & CDN Forums ( http://forums.citrix.com/cdn )
http://twitter.com/chrisfleck
Today, we are pleased to announce the winners of the Citrix Ready XenDesktop challenge. We asked our Thin Client partners to submit videos representing the best Thin Client to use with XenDesktop. The videos were posted to CitrixTV to be viewed by ourselves and the community. The winners were decided by following judges; Doug Brown, Sumit Dhawan, and myself Chris Fleck, plus the community votes of ratings and view count.
1. Best User Experience - Wyse http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/377
User experience has always been a key concern for IT planning to rollout XenDesktop to new users. Increasingly these users are knowledge workers with higher demands and expectations. This includes things like boot-up time, peripheral support and no compromise Multimedia.
Doug Brown : I loved how Wyse was able to show off not only video running through XenDesktop but also a real time video camera! This use case has become more and more needed in today's world! Nicely done!
Sumit Dhawan : The collaboration function demonstrated was impressive. Nicely done.
Chris Fleck : I liked the Wyse demonstration of full Webcam functionality, this is a growing requirement for knowledge workers moving from PC's.
2. Best Management - IGEL http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/530
A key driver for desktop virtualization is the control it affords IT administrators and the cost savings it achieves. Thin clients form a key component of the broader value equation. Example of demonstrations to illustrate management and TCO can include Management console and functionality
Doug Brown : The video was short and sweat and in the short time IGEL was able to show how simple it is to use their management tools to make changes and rollout users. Impressive!
Sumit Dhawan : The best demonstration on management, and creatively shared.
Chris Fleck : IGEL gave a informative demonstration of their management console and capability that would be useful for Thin Client deployments with XenDesktop.
3. Best Security – HP http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/688
Security is a key driver in the adoption of desktop virtualization. In a world where security concerns gains increasing importance, please demonstrate how your company's device complements the security associated with XenDesktop. Examples can include, but are not limited to, support for Smart Cards and the ability to harden, lock down and securely manage endpoint devices.
Doug Brown : I thought HP went above and beyond in their video detailing their security enhancements to XenDesktop. By far the best video detailing security along with being very well produced.
Sumit Dhawan : Solid videos showcasing security - no one came close in demonstrating the security capabilities
Chris Fleck : HP added features such as USB port control and Smart Card support are important to many customers considering XenDesktop as a more secure and controlled environment.
4. Best Form Factor 10ZiG http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/672
Show how your company's device brings the ideals of form and function together to deliver a XenDesktop access device that is not only cool to look at gets users excited about getting their hands on, but is easy and useful, delivers a better user experience, can lower cost of ownership and is more secure.
Doug Brown : Not only are the 10ZiG clients small and pretty but I liked how 10ZiG showed how easy it is to hide them away behind a users monitor. Pretty cool stuff...
Sumit Dhawan : Small, good fit behind the monitor - and a great demo of form factor
Chris Fleck : The 10ZiG devices are small and look good.
5. Best Innovation HP http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/677
Innovation is a key way for partners to differentiate their offerings to add value above and beyond that provide by XenDesktop. This category is for partners to highlight complementary hardware or software features that have been added to achieve greatest value add to XenDesktop customers.
Doug Brown : I was very impressed with everything HP packed in to their videos. They truly showed us the amazing innovations they are making with their thin clients.
Sumit Dhawan : The video was comprehensive showcasing the end to end approach - a hallmark for innovation
Chris Fleck : HP innovations around multi-monitors, device management and quick-release mounting feature are all great examples of how to enhance Thin Client deployments.
6. Support for Locally Streamed Desktop Devon IT http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/676/
Citrix has recently highlighted the ability of XenDesktop to be used to stream the operating system to the endpoint for local execution. The submissions in this category will highlight how the partners' solutions are ideally suited to receive streamed desktops. Examples of ways to illustrate value are inclusion of the Operating System streaming client and the ability to include hardware resources (CPU, GPU) required for local execution.
Doug Brown : DevonIT did an amazing job showing us a streamed XenDesktop and they explained it all and showed it all in a really "cool" fashion. Good stuff!
Sumit Dhawan : DevonIT demonstrated this the best - showing the most challenging use case
Chris Fleck : DevonIT makes use of the Citrix Provisioning Server Streaming OS feature of XenDesktop yielding a great admin and user experience.
7. Best overall Video ( Expert Panel Vote ) Devon IT http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/673
Doug Brown : DevonIT went above and beyond in this video. It was funny, explained their total value add and did I mention it was just downright funny? A must watch and many kudos to them. A stellar video! (Unless you try to steal one of their thin clients and get hit in the face with it!)
Sumit Dhawan : Creative, fun, informative - and excellent use of marketing. Great way to drive traffic by making the front screen of the video appealing for the target audience to click on 
Chris Fleck : DevonIT's video presentation was a creative and informative way to highlight the benefits of Thin Clients including XenDesktop and the TC5. A sign of more to come ?
8. Best overall Video ( User Community Vote ) Devon IT http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/673
The Community spoke with their views, votes and comments, the DevonIT views are at 1028 and counting, with an average of 4 stars.
Congratulations to DevonIT and all the category winners ! Well Done. Thank you for participating in the challenge and thanks to the Citrix community that voted with their views and rankings. ( and thanks Vishal Ganeriwala for putting this challenge together )
With the release of Citrix Receiver for iPhone 1.02 including AG and RSA support, the ability to securely deliver any app, anywhere, is closer than ever to reality ( we already cover WinMo, Symbian and close to BlackBerry and Android ). One question I have been pondering with Martin Duursma and few others on the team is what is next ? It's great we can get to all these other Windows and RIA apps, but the app many of us use most is email. The question is, what is missing from the native iPhone email or Outlook ? What features would be most useful for a mobile app that we would use all the time from any device?
The native iPhone email client does a good job, but not everything. Attachment viewing is limited and sometimes crashes if the file is too big. You can't write an email and attach a file from your PC or file server. Also many company IT policies do not even allow iPhone access because of security concerns and lack of data / device control. Many of these obstacles could be overcome if the app was hosted on XenApp provided there was fast access and a great user experience. There are probably many new features that could enhance the email experience but you don't even know you want it or need it. Xobni is a good example of an Outlook value-add that I find useful even though I didn't even know I needed it before I started using it every day. So there must be mobile email features that would make your life easier, more productive, or just provide a better experience. What if you had an app that was optimized for the device real estate and mobile scenario ( ie just the functionality that you are likely to need when using your mobile device vs when using a laptop/desktop). If you could have the Nirvana app that was continuously available as a hosted app. Imagine the possibilities !
Some things that come to mind are listed below, do you agree or have more for the list ? Please add your votes and comments.
Have you ever needed to demo Citrix XenApp to a colleague or customer ? Or perhaps just needed a reference connection to validate a client is working properly ? You may have also have wanted to check out Citrix Dazzle based on a demo account vs your production environment.
Now you can easily check out a live demo XenApp system hosted in the Cloud. You only need to enter your email to get your own credentials to check out a variety of apps that run as expected. ( not canned Flash demos ) . You can also simply send someone the link for them to get their own credentials, as well including links to client downloads if required. The current system will provide access from PC's Mac's, WinMo and iPhone's ( any where, any device ).
Give it a try and spread the link @ http://CitrixCloud.net
The Citrix C3 Lab with Amazon AWS now hosts XenApp Fundamentals on Windows 2003 Server with no installation required. The C3 Blueprint describes how to set up the environment so you can be testing or demoing apps delivered from the Cloud in minutes. XenApp Fundamentals is the new name for Access Essentials which is an ideal solution for SMB's looking for a simple way to administer and deliver Windows apps to office PC's , Thin Clients, Desktop Appliances, home PC's, Mac's, Laptops or mobile devices. Only a Receiver client is required on the endpoint, the applications get installed on a single XenApp server and are simply published to the users you want to access the app. The Admin console is wizard driven and easy to use, with the option for advanced features only if required.
Putting XenApp Fundamentals in EC2 makes everything even easier, no servers to buy or configure, the image is pre-built and ready to run. The Amazon plus Windows cost is only 12.5 cents per hour while you are using it. Even if you leave it on 24 hours a day all month that only $93 /mo ( plus storage and bandwidth, which is nominal for testing ). We have also included 2 User XenApp evaluation Licenses, so there are no other downloads or registrations required. Once you set up an Amazon account and start the server you only need to install your own apps in the image and click to publish to any user with any device.
This video walks you through every step to get started in 15 minutes.
( thanks to Simon Waterhouse for building the image )
Let us know of any questions or idea's on your use case in the comments below.
I presented this week at the iPhone Developer Summit iPhone Developer Summit an alternative option of app development for the iPhone or any mobile device. The basic premise is to use the Tools or Development platforms you allready know to modify or build applications that can optimized for viewing on the iPhone yet actually run on XenApp servers within the datacenter.
The concept was very well received by non-developer IT Pro's and developers that are experts in other platforms, now trying to get their head around Objective C and other iPhone specific considerations. For the existing iPhone Developers the concept was foriegn and they remained skeptical. Thats OK, there is lots of room for more native iPhone apps and reason's to go mobile. As soon as users get the taste of leaving their laptop home there will allways be all those other app's or docs they will want access to. For help on getting started go to our Page on CDN
Demonstrations of Apps using these concepts available on CitrixCloud.net
There are probably many scenarios that would benefit from the ability to separate XenApp servers from the data source. Unfortunately this has not been a recommended practice due to the latency incurred when moving data from one location to another. Now with the emerging availability of Private and Public Clouds and typically constrained premise space and power this capability could become even more interesting. The time to move data across the WAN securely has been the limiting factor but how about using the Citrix Repeater to accelerate the data and Access Gateway to secure it ? Yes this is possible and we wanted to provide a Proof of Concept, demo and C3 Blueprint that may be beneficial.
This demonstration was included in the Synergy session on Citrix C3 Cloud Architecture. The client laptop located in Florida is connecting over ICA/HDX to a XenApp server hosted in the EC2 Cloud in Virginia, which is pulling data from a file server located in Santa Clara Ca. As indicated in the demo when the Repeater acceleration is enabled the time to open a 5 Megabit file is about 7 seconds. A usable experience for the document delivery example. However with the acceleration disabled the time to open the same 5 Mb file grows to about 2 minutes and unacceptable experience. A 10X+ improvement from acceleration.
Certainly this configuration has limitations and may or may not apply to your situation but it may open the possibilities to solving many app delivery and data location challenges. This example can be recreated easily following the C3 Blueprint and the AMI ( Amazon Machine Image ) template available as part of the C3 Lab in EC2. This does presume you have an available Branch Repeater and Access Gateway on premise to complete the PoC. Try it out and / or let us know what challenges this type of solution may help solve.
Also check out Craig Ellrod's Cloud Bridge post that utilizes Vyatta for a full Premise to Cloud VPN.
http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/craigel/2009/06/08/Cloud Bridge
Follow me @ http://twitter.com/chrisfleck
A lot of Buzz is in the air about what Apple is going to release ( or not ) at WWDC next month. As usual Apple has done a great job of keeping people guessing about what will be announced and when it will be available. Since the release of the Citrix Receiver for iPhone there has also been an increased interest in the iPhone for business use and how it can be utilized to be more productive ( and have a little fun ). The interest has also increase the desire for more, lots of people want the iPhone to become the " NirvanaPhone " by adding video and Keyboard capability , but there are other requests as well. " This would be awesome if it only did X ... "
So let's make some predictions and put some numbers to the features and announcements we want at WWDC.
In the early days of virtualization most developers and IT Pro's would not trust deploying production workloads in Virtual Machines. However, as soon as it was apparent how easy it was to test apps and configurations plus prototype new environments prior to production, virtualization became a defacto standard for test and dev environments. Over time virtualization improved in performance, robustness and management to the point where IT is now comfortable deploying a significant portion of production workloads on Virtualized platforms.
Move the clock forward to today and Cloud based Infrastructure as a Service ( IaaS ). Most companies are not ready to deploy their production environments to the Cloud, however every company spends a significant amount of time and resources for testing , evaluation and PoC's prior to deployment in production on premise or at a Colo. It turns out that IaaS is a great platform for test, dev and evaluations even if it may be early for enterprise production environments. Zero capital, rapid deployment, temporary workloads and elastic capacity are all attributes of IaaS that map directly to test and dev environments.
Citrix has now established the Citrix C3 Lab with Amazon Web Services to enable; PoC's, evaluations, demonstrations, testing, training and more. Pre-built Virtual Appliances available as AMI ( Amazon Machine Image ) templates are now available for XenApp, Citrix Secure Gateway and Access Gateway. In addition we are providing C3 ( Citrix Cloud Center ) Blueprints and a community site dedicated to provide " How to " descriptions, configuration guides, videos and forums to support the Lab. The time to build XenApp environments can literally change from days to hours or even minutes utilizing C3 Labs. The expense of buying test servers for every new test or evaluation is changed from $ thousands up front to as low as 12.5 cents per hour. The time for racking, cabling and powering is gone. The time to install Windows OS, then patches, then XenApp, then configure, then redo ( because you didn't read the manual ) is eliminated. You can literally be up and running in a little as 15 minutes. More complex environments can also be built with multiple AMI's networked together in almost unlimited configurations.
Going forward expect to see more C3 Blueprints, more Citrix products in AMI templates, and more suggested solutions to evaluate. We may also utilize the lab for tech previews or hosting research projects to gain customer insight and feedback. Stay tuned for more and give us some suggestions.
Saving significant time and money for test and dev just may be a leading indicator for how Clouds aew adopted into IT production environments later.
The Citrix Receiver for iPhone 1.0 is now available in the App Store ! This is the product thousands of our users have been ( impatiently ) waiting for. The 1.0 release includes support for Access Gateway and RSA 2 Factor authentication enabling secure access over WiFi or 3G networks anywhere.
To provide some history on what influenced this new Citrix Receiver look back to last year when Apple released the iPhone SDK. We had lots of discussion inside Citrix about the priority and significance of developing a client for the iPhone. Although it was possible to access Citrix servers from mobile devices in the past, the user experience was poor due to screen size, slow networks and cumbersome input. The iPhone finally provided a platform that had a relatively large screen, a 3G network and the awesome gesture feature that made panning and zooming usable.
So we knew we could do it, the question was should we do it. Beyond the typical business case with projections of users/licenses and data points of individual customer requests we did an experiment by posting the question to the entire community. As you may have noticed this single blog post now has over 200,000 views and 200+ comments.
Interestingly the comments came not only from our common base of IT pro's but a surprising amount came from end users as well. These are just a few examples of what we heard..
" Hospitalists want to use this. We have Cerner here, and I need Citrix working to connect to it. I would use this 50 times a day. Right now I have to repeatedly sign in to different terminals. The iPhone is the right form factor for this. Laptops / tablets are too bulky for doctors to carry around -- we often do not have a surface to put them on. ..David"
"It's not just the medical community. I'm Director of IT for a large chemical company. I have a highly mobile user base - engineers visiting the production facilities, etc. Currently they are all armed with Blackberry devices. That's great for email only..... but forget attachments or getting into some of the apps we currently host in a Citrix environment (such as our production scheduling tool). An iPhone client solves these problems. We'd be off the Blackberry platform and onto the iPhone with Citrix very quickly. By the way, we have a huge investment in the Citrix platform, and it's getting larger - more and more of our users are moving away from laptops to thin clients. A Citrix client on the iPhone will come close to eliminating the need for any laptops at all from most users. Do it, and do it fast ! "
"It's not just the medical or chemical companies, I am the CIO for a logistics company, and we do all of our global operations using MetaFrame, and having it on my iPhone really helps."
Regarding the use cases, the blog comments describe many of them. I think it's mostly a matter of how mobile the users are as to how often this client will be used. For office based workers that have an iPhone it may be a just another cool app helps out in a pinch. But for the increasing mobile workforce that absolutely needs access to apps & data anywhere ... it's priceless... ( just like when you need to get to a server and you only have your phone with you) It seems that most everyone would like to be able to leave their laptop home, myself included.
So let us know what you think, do you agree with the rest of the Citrix Community? Does it live up to your expectations ? Download the Citrix Receiver from the App Store and try it out. If you are not ready to put it in your production environment yet, register for the free demo at CitrixCloud.net and test the sample apps plus the great new App we built called Doc Finder. If you want to build your own environment to test your own apps try the C3 Lab in Amazon EC2.
For more information, news, questions and suggestions go to;
From your iPhone, check out;
m.iphone.citrix.com
It's still not official .... but the Tech Preview of the long awaited Citrix Receiver for the iPhone is now available in the AppStore. Anyone with a properly configured Citrix XenApp environment can download the Citrix Receiver and access authorized company apps from their iPhone today ! Now is the time to start testing the iPhone in your environment, look for ways to increase productivity, and have some fun.
There are some restrictions in this Tech Preview so be sure to check out the iPhone Community pages we have set up for requirements, tips and forum discussions. If you want to set up a separate test environment to test your apps over 3G we have a preconfigured XenApp Virtual Appliance in Amazon EC2 that you can copy and set up in 15 minutes.
As part of Citrix Receiver we are also providing a new feature called Doc Finder that runs on XenApp but provides an iPhone experience to allow users to easily find, view, edit and send documents. Because the Documents are hosted securely in the data center nothing is downloaded and Doc Finder provides fast one click access to all of your important files.
For more information, news, questions and suggestions go to;
From your iPhone, check out;
m.iphone.citrix.com
To get the real scoop on Citrix Receiver, talk to the experts, plus get some official news, I recommend you attend Citrix Synergy in May... and bring your iPhone... Learn more at www.CitrixSynergy.com
And finally, a big thanks and shout out to the Braeburn project team .. Well Done ! ( actually .. they're not done .. )
Things are changing fast in the world of Cloud Computing, however one question remains the same. Will it save me money and how much? To follow up on a previous post on Cloud Economics 101 Part 1, I looked at a fairly simple example of 5 Servers for a dev/test environment and identified the incremental costs of buying 5 servers and running them on premise or a Colo and then compared that to Amazon EC2. The analysis did not include many variables such as real estate costs and labor savings which may or may not apply to the particular situation. The results indicated that a Premise based deployment could provide the lowest "incremental" cost when compared to EC2 if the servers were running continuously. On the other hand EC2 provided significant savings for short term workloads with no upfront costs.
| |
Purchase - on Premise |
|---|---|
| $ 15,000 |
Quad-Core Servers ( 5 x 3,000 each ) |
| $ 750 |
1/2 Rack + Gigabit Switch |
| $ 15,750 |
Total Hardware cost |
| $ 5,800 |
Annual amortized cost, 5% over 3 years |
| $ 0 |
Assuming no incremental real estate cost |
| $ 2,000 |
Annual power & AC cost |
| $ 7,800 |
Total annual cost on premise |
| Purchase - at Colo |
|
|---|---|
| $ 8,000 |
Colo fee's; 1/2 Rack + power + bandwidth |
| $ 5,800 |
Annual amortized cost |
| $ 13,800 |
Total annual cost at Colo |
| Cloud |
|
|---|---|
| $ 35,040 |
24x |
| $ 8,320 |
40 hours x 52 weeks |
| $ 688 |
40 hours x 4.3 weeks |
What has changed recently at Amazon is a new pricing model that provides the option for "Reserved Instances" http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing which includes an upfront fee ( 1 year or 3 year term ) and a reduced per hour charge. The analysis below reflects the new pricing model applied to the same 5 server scenario as above. As indicated the new model results in a significant savings compared to EC2 standard pricing; 31% for the 1 year term and 48% for the 3 year term assuming the servers are running 24/7. However, when compared to the 40 hour per week scenario the cost at $16,146 ( or $10,229 3 year ) is higher than the EC2 Standard price of $8,320 or the Premise cost of $7,800.
| Annual $ | Reserved Pricing at EC2 |
|---|---|
| 24,162 | 24x365x5 ( $.80 high CPU ) 1 Year Reservered, $2,600x5 Upfront amortized at 5% |
| 18,245 | 24x365x5 ( $.80 High CPU ) 3 Year Reservered, $4,000x5 Upfront amortized at 5% |
| 16,146 | 40 hours x 52 x 5 ( $.80 High CPU ) 1 Year |
| 10,229 | 40 hours x 52 x 5 ( $.80 High CPU ) 3 Year |
So will the Cloud save money? the answer remains the same ... it depends. The new " Reserved Instance" pricing model provides substantial savings over standard pricing when used continuously but the standard pricing still is more effective for short time periods such as a 40 hour week load. As noted in the earlier posts there are many other variable cost savings by putting workloads in the cloud such as real estate costs, facility upgrades plus the intangible but real benefit of reduced time to develop/test/deploy.
The "Reserved Instance" pricing will also impact the variable workload analyzed in Cloud Economics Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud scenario, this should provide more content for an upcoming post.
Cloud Economics 101 Part 1 - Premise vs Cloud vs Colo
Cloud Economics 101 Part 2 - Premise Plus Cloud
Cloud Economics 101 Part 4 - Amazon EC2 vs Terremark vCloud
If your thinking about attending Synergy 2009 you may want to check out some of the "underground" videos taken at Synergy 2008 on a new Synergy Underground Channel on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/synergyunderground
Citrix Synergy 2009
Where Virtualization, Networking and Application Delivery Meet
MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas (May 4-7, 2009)
For more information: www.citrixsynergy.com
We have a poll going on over on *Linkedin*asking for feedback and opinions about the impact of making XenServer free. If your part of Linkedin please add your vote. So far the result are not too surprising with the majority feeling the largest impact will be around new adopters to virtualization. This has been one of the primary targets for XenServer and the product strategy initiative. In addition, we expect many companies with existing virtualization implementations to evaluate XenServer and some of those also make a switch as a result. This could be because of the current costs or performace limitations such as running XenApp on virtualized servers. The Poll seems to reinforce this may happen as well, however more data/samples are required to better quantify the results. Let us know your thoughts.
Download XenServer for free here