Here is a three minute (or less) pitch building the story of Citrix technology. It doesn't capture everything, but it gives a fair flavour. Intended for technology audiences, potentially with little exposure to Citrix, I think it's is "as simple as possible, but no simpler".

As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

Michael

Citrix technology ranges from point to point desktop sharing like GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting (1) ...

... through to sophisticated enterprise delivery of Windows desktops and applications, including remote sessions from Windows Server farms (2) ...

... and full desktop images, hosted on a shared server and delivered over the internet (3).

The desktop technologies are complemented by application acceleration appliances, delivering web apps for dot com and the enterprise (4).

All can run "virtually" to enable the promise of cloud computing (5). Indeed, the Citrix hypervisor is at the heart of the largest (IaaS) clouds.

____

Wavemaker integrates with Citrix NetScaler seamlessly for web services.

WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio is an easy-to-use visual builder that enables the drag & drop assembly of scalable, web-applications using Ajax widgets, web services and databases. WaveMaker Studio will look and feel especially familiar to client/server developers who are used to working with visual tools. Check out the Wavemaker specifications here.

WaveMaker has helped customers reduce development costs by 67% and cut the lines of code written by 98%. Less code makes WaveMaker applications cheaper to maintain and easier to manage. The NetScaler REST API's are going to be released soon. Today, the API provides web services in the form of Java. We, at Citrixlabs, have recently been using the Java Services and the examples in our API Documentation, with Wavemaker, to built a Proof of Concept.

Wavemaker allows you to build a GUI interface, consume web services through a .wsdl definition, save it to a WAR file, and then run that WAR file against a Tomcat web server. All of this is done using Drag & Drop functionality in the Wavemaker interface. Running a WAR file, allows interaction with the NetScaler for several types of services such as configuring load balancing services, or gathering statistics.

Possible uses

Users can create their own interface/GUI to the NetScaler for configuration and monitoring. Multi-tenancy has come up in discussions, as a way to manage multiple configurations through a single interface, perhaps on several NetScaler VPX devices, either in a XenServer deployment or in the cloud.

Current Proof of Concept

Having said that, using Wavemaker, we were able to successfully ...

• Create a GUI user interface to NetScaler
• Consume the NSConfig web services from the examples in the NetScaler API Documentation
• Configure the NetScaler with a new Load Balancing VIP and associated backend servers

If you have a NetScaler, the API's are already there. Connect to your NetScaler, select downloads, and navigate to XML API.

The best part about Wavemaker is it is Open Source.

Tap into the power of AppExpert!

Citrix customers have often asked us for help with promoting Citrix within their organizations. In response, we wanted to let you know about the Customer Success center, a new section of the Citrix website dedicated to supporting Citrix customer advocates. 

The Customer Success center was created to gather together tools, tips, and other information to help Citrix customers like you promote Citrix within your organizations. The center includes a searchable database of Citrix customer case studies; videos from the Citrix Innovation Awards; an overview of the Citrix Voice of the Customer reference program; and the Guide to Expanding your Citrix Success.  

The Guide to Expanding your Citrix Success is a new, in-depth guide that can help you build a business case for Citrix. It includes 'talking points' about Citrix benefits that you can share with your management, IT colleagues and users. It shows how to demonstrate the ROI of a Citrix solution, and how to counter common objections to expanding a Citrix implementation. Links to reports from industry analysts and market research firms about Citrix are featured, as are business-oriented thought leadership articles and high-level overviews of the Citrix product lines.  

The Customer Success center and the guide will be updated regularly, and we'll post updates to this blog when new tools are added to the site. If you'd like to be alerted when new resources are available, simply subscribe via RSS to this blog.

We look forward to helping you to expand your success with Citrix!

How do you prevent the spread of flu, create happier, more productive employees and "inoculate" your organization against disruption? It starts with making technology simple and adding the right organizational support. Let me explain.

The other day my eight-year-old boy, Alex, woke up complaining vaguely that he was not feeling well. He didn't have a fever, and he really didn't have other specific symptoms. At that point, I had a choice. I could send him to school and see if it went away, or I could keep him home.

Since my husband and I both work, the temptation could be to send the kids to school unless they're clearly ill. Only I didn't. At this point it's finally gotten so easy for me to seamlessly work from home at a moment's notice, there's no need to take the risk of exposing our germs to anyone else.

After getting my son to work on his homework, I logged into GoToMyPC which lets me securely view and control my office computer and work on my documents and programs as if I were sitting there in the office. I reviewed my meetings for the day, and informed the organizers I would join remotely via GoToMeeting.

Over the years, I have seen firsthand how these remote work tools have empowered myself and my husband - as well as co-workers, friends and customers who have shared their stories - to keep up with demanding jobs while balancing the rest of their lives. I helped launch GoToMyPC in 2001 then used it to work from home with a new baby. My husband could take the kids to soccer practice in the afternoon, and finish work from home at night. We're not tempted to bring our cold germs to work, and we always know we can get things done even if we're not in the office. It's no wonder work flexibility tops the list of most desired employee benefits.

Not everyone must get a vaccine for the general population to be protected so I imagine the same is true of remote work. Not everyone needs to be able to do it, but those of us "inoculated" with the ability to do so easily, at a moments notice, protect a much larger group. In so doing, we help prevent flu contagion, get work done when traffic or other disruptions threaten business, take better care of our families, and generally increase our well-being and productivity.

For organizations wanting to see these benefits, there are two potential pitfalls:

1. The key to adoption is making technology simple. For instance, I rely on GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting because they are easy-to-use and dependable. The more I use them, the more I benefit my employer with increased productivity - even when I might otherwise be unavailable. Some organizations think putting the tools in place is enough. However, they must also be easy and convenient before they will be widely adopted.

2. Work flexibility is a privilege. Organizations must provide remote work tools and encourage employees to make use of them in a responsible way. This requires a results-oriented culture of accountability. Measure task completion, not hours logged at a particular place. Plan for a future of increased work mobility and family-friendly policies. You may not want sick employees in the office, traveling employees to be out of touch, or new parents to quit, but if you don't publicly and frequently encourage remote work as a solution, that's what you may get.

My son, incidentally, was fine and back to school the next day. Perhaps I was overly cautious, but I'm sure glad it's easy for me to make that choice...

See Workshifting for more on working from anywhere.

Citrix Support is focused on ensuring Customer and Partner satisfaction with the support of our products. One of our initiatives is to increase the ability of our Partners and Customers to leverage self-service avenues for finding answers and resolving problems. A key area that the Support teams focus on is development a series of How To videos covering the most common questions asked in support.

To date there are over 40 How To videos covering 11 products available from Citrix TV. Over the coming weeks and months lots more will be added.

If you have a How To video suggestion or feedback on the current videos, contact us via one of the following channels:

• email AskSupport@citrix.com
• Tweet us @citrixsupport and @citrixreadiness
• Leave a message on our Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/CitrixSupport

Current video series available on Citrix TV are:

• Citrix XenServer - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/137
• Citrix XenApp - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/131
• Citrix XenDesktop - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/135
• Citrix NetScaler - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/133
• Citrix Provisioning Services - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/136
• Citrix Web Interface - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/129
• Citrix Merchandising Server - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/124
• Citrix Password Manager - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/126
• Citrix EdgeSight - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/132
• Citrix Workflow Studio - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/130
• Citrix Access Gateway Standard Edition - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#series/134

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

Do you know Windows 7? Do you know CITRIX? A Windows 7 Themepack...

Download: simplicity is power.themepack

Just download.. doubleclick and feel the power of simplicity

Edit: If you like the pictures in the themepack, just change the extension of the downloaded .themepack to .zip. Then you can extract the images used there.

Citrix Education is hosting the following 1-hour virtual sessions to scope the next generation of XenServer training:

• For Citrix customers: Tuesday, November 17, 1:00pm Eastern/10:00 Pacific
• For Citrix partners: Wednesday, November 18, 1:00pm Eastern/10:00 Pacific

If you would like to participate in one of these sessions, then email me at mark.carter@citrix.com for registration information. In your email, state whether you are a customer or a partner and what level of XenServer experience you have.

Each session is limited to 5 participants, so don't delay!

Also, feel free to email me if you would like to participate in this discussion but cannot attend one of the scheduled sessions. Citrix Education will look to schedule additional sessions depending on interest and availability of participants.

Thank you for your interest, and we look forward to hearing your input.

Citrix Support is focused on ensuring Customer and Partner satisfaction with the support of our products. One of our initiatives is to increase the ability of our Partners and Customers to leverage self-service avenues for finding answers and resolving problems. A key area that the Support teams focus on is development of troubleshooting and health checking tools.

Following on from my last post about the Citrix Printing Tool another recently released tool from Citrix Support is the Citrix Quick Launch Tool.

This tool offers a simplified and easy to user interface to connect to any XenApp server or its published applications over the ICA protocol.

You can download the Citrix Printing Tool here.

Also find below a video by the tools developer Frederic Serriere, providing an overview and demo of the Citrix Quick Launch Tool.

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) 0.1 is an effort by several community members to create a complete open source virtual infrastructure solution (Hypervisor + Management Toolstack) as a reference architecture for cloud deployments.
This 0.1 release provides a stable platform on which to build, and to provoke community discussion about the final form that XCP 1.0 should take. Developers, testers, and users are all invited to try the XCP 0.1 solution and help drive the community toward the future release of XCP 1.0.

The base platform proposed contains the following features:

• Latest Xen 3.4.1
• Linux 2.6.27 Kernel
• Windows PV Drivers, Microsoft Certified (Binary Only)
• XAPI Enterprise-class Management Tool Stack
  • VM Lifecycle: Live snapshots, checkpoint, migration
  • Resource Pools: Safe live relocation, auto configuration, DR
  • Host Configuration: Flexible storage management, networking, power management
  • Event Tracking: Progress, notification
  • Secure Communication using SSL
  • Upgrade and Patching Capabilities
  • Real-time Performance Monitoring and Alerting
• Basic SR-IOV Support
• CDROM and Network Host Installer
• Full Featured "xe" CLI and web services API

For more information, please visit these sites:

General Product Info - http://www.xen.org/products/cloudxen.html
XCP Roadmap - http://www.xen.org/products/cloud_roadmap.html
User and Developer Support - http://www.xen.org/products/cloud_support.html
Source and Binary Distributions -http://www.xen.org/products/cloud_source.html
XAPI Toolstack Developer Guide - http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XAPI_Developer_Guide

All questions on the XCP 0.1 release should be directed to these mailing lists:

XAPI Toolstack Questions -xen-api
Developer Questions - xen-develwith XCP in subject line
User Questions -  xen-userswith XCP in subject line

Citrix Support is focused on ensuring Customer and Partner satisfaction with the support of our products. One of our initiatives is to increase the ability of our Partners and Customers to leverage self-service avenues for finding answers and resolving problems. A key area that the Support teams focus on is development of troubleshooting and health checking tools.

One of the most recent tools to come out of Citrix Support is the Citrix Printing Tool.

The Citrix Printing Tool helps configuring and troubleshooting the Citrix Printing subsystem on XenApp, XenApp Online Plugin, and XenDesktop products.

You can download the Citrix Printing Tool here.

Also find below a video by the tools developer Frederic Serriere, providing an overview and demo of the Citrix Printing Tool.

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

Hey, everyone. I have posted a new how-to video on configuring cookie consistency using the Application Firewall feature of Citrix NetScaler.

I based my tutorial on a lab exercise that I took from the recently released CNS-300-21 Advanced Administration for Citrix NetScaler 9.0 Platinum Edition instructor-led training course. Click here if you like the video and are ready to take your NetScaler skills and knowledge to the next level.

The Citrix Workflow Studio Evaluation Virtual Appliance (EVA) is now available. This EVA provides you with 30 days to evaluate a pre-configured virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 that has Workflow Studio 2.0 already installed and configured with all activity libraries and the sample workflows from CDN. Download the EVA and review the Getting Started guide .

If you have any questions leave a comment or contact me directly

Over the last couple of months there has been lots of communication around the XenApp 5 FP2 release.

One of the components of XenApp that was updated with FP2 which hasen't received much publicity is the Web Interface 5.2 update.

I would like to take sometime to share with you what is new in this release.

For those of you who haven't had a chance to review the new features, see the list below, then watch my video for an overview of each feature and basic use case.

New features in Web Interface 5.2

• XenApp VM Hosted Apps
• XenDesktop User Roaming
• Disaster Recovery
• New Management Console
• Secure Ticket Authority Redundancy

David
Twitter - http://twitter.com/citrixreadiness
Citrix Support on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/citrixsupport

Award nominations for Citrix

Citrix wanted to let you know that some of our products have been nominated for the SYS-CON Virtualization Reader's Choice Award and the Cloud Computing Readers' Choice Awards. These awards recognize excellence in the virtualization and cloud-based software, solutions or services provided by the industry's top vendors.

We wanted to let community members know about this nomination, since the final award winners will be determined through a public voting process. The voting period for these awards is now open and will end on Oct. 23 .

If you feel inclined to vote for a Citrix product for one of these awards, we would appreciate your support! To vote, please visit the Virtualization Readers' Choice Awards and the Cloud Computing Readers' Choice Awards voting pages. You will need to include your e-mail address and select one product in each category. Then, place your vote by clicking "vote now" on the bottom of the Web page. Award winners will be announced the week of Nov. 2.

Thank you for your consideration!

Don't miss this webcast as our Systems Engineers discuss the new technical features and benefits of XenDesktop 4. Find out why XenDesktop is the most flexible way to centralise and deliver your desktops.

In this webinar you will learn:

• What's new in the latest version of XenDesktop 4
• Best practices for upgrading to the latest release

Click below to learn more:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1857244

In this session you will learn about the key improvements in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and new license bundles from Microsoft in addition to how Citrix and Microsoft continue to innovate together to further develop and enhance desktop virtualisation.

In this webinar you will learn:

• What's new in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• About new virtual desktop licensing bundles from Microsoft
• How Microsoft and Citrix work together to deliver virtual desktops

Click below to learn more:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1857900

You are invited to the next meeting of the New York Metro Citrix Users Group.

The User Group provides members with an opportunity to share and learn about common issues and utilization of Citrix® technology. Additional discussions include technology design and infrastructure, enterprise solutions and ideas, trends, and upcoming activities of interest.

Agenda:
4:00 Opening Remarks - Mediator
4:05 Citrix Announcements - Citrix
• Product Updates
• Beta Announcements
• Tech Releases
4:30 Application Virtualization - Streaming
• Citrix
• Symantec
• Microsoft
4:45 Citrix VPX - Citrix
5:15 Open Discussion - ALL
• Feature Requests
6:00 Next Meeting - Agenda Requests

This event will be hosted by Ivan Carrasco, Corporate Network, Depository Trust Clearing Company and supported by Citrix Systems.

Click below to learn more:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1857032

You are invited to the next meeting of the New York Metro Citrix Users Group.

The User Group provides members with an opportunity to share and learn about common issues and utilization of Citrix® technology. Additional discussions include technology design and infrastructure, enterprise solutions and ideas, trends, and upcoming activities of interest.

Agenda:
4:00 Opening Remarks - Mediator
4:05 Citrix Announcements - Citrix
• Product Updates
• Beta Announcements
• Tech Releases
4:30 Application Virtualization - Streaming
• Citrix
• Symantec
• Microsoft
4:45 Citrix VPX - Citrix
5:15 Open Discussion - ALL
• Feature Requests
6:00 Next Meeting - Agenda Requests

This event will be hosted by Ivan Carrasco, Corporate Network, Depository Trust Clearing Company and supported by Citrix Systems.

Click below to learn more:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1857031

You are invited to the next meeting of the New Jersey Citrix User Group

Twitter: http://twitter.com/nycctxusrgroup

The User Group provides members with an opportunity to share and learn about common issues and utilization of CITRIX technology. Additional discussions include technology design and infrastructure, enterprise solutions and ideas, trends, and upcoming activities of interest.

Agenda

• 9:00AM Opening Remarks - Mediator 9:15AM Citrix Announcements - Citrix Product Updates
• Beta Announcements
• Tech Releases 9:45AM Scheduled Presentation - TBD
• Feature Requests 10:30AM Open Discussion - ALL

Click below to learn more:
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/events/event.asp?eventID=1858386

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.

Datamation Top Tech Blogs