As an organisation expands and the processing of its information becomes more complex, the management of a considerable number of desktop PCs invariably becomes a bigger financial and administrative burden. However, by centralising information onto a Citrix solution, organisations can drastically reduce the overheads entailed in maintaining software applications on a large number of PCs, while all the applications remain accessible to users.
As such, a Citrix solution enables organisations to box clever since, though there may be hundreds of applications it needs to access, individual employees may only require access to a particular set of applications. Citrix enables such employees to access the applications they need whilst maintaining the full range of applications centrally on a number of servers.
An organisation with 100 desktops, for example, would typically need to purchase 100 Microsoft licences for Office even if at any given time there might only be 60 or so employees sitting at their desks actively accessing their workstations. But instead of licensing Microsoft software, the same organisation could opt for Citrix servers that could make available up to 60 licences for use through the concurrent connection settings, with the company paying only for those licences in use.
Clearly a key driver behind this return to thin client technology is economics. The price of a Citrix licence is considerably less expensive than the cost of a new PC, licensed and configured with a range of applications. A Citrix solution, though, can link older, slower and cheaper desktops to a powerful server which can manage all the processing work. Therefore, thin client technology should enable organisations to cut overheads by reducing the need to replace and upgrade workstations as frequently as at present.
Furthermore, there are benefits to be had from purchasing a Citrix access gateway, a firewall or router that can be placed on an internet site which runs secure socket ware protection. Organisations can then purchase an SSL certificate for it, giving a website address such as
The great advantage of this system is that, regardless of where employees are in the world, if they have access to a PC with an internet connection they can access office information without needing to rely on a certain set of software programmes being available on any particular PC.
Another benefit of this system is where an organisation has employees working on a part-time or consultancy capacity, for whom rather than providing full access to their information network, they instead wish to provide access only to the particular applications such employees need.
A Citrix access gateway provides these employees with a user name and login and the url to use internet explorer. The employee can then login, typically via
The advantage that Citrix has over terminal services is that it can offer a load-balancing facility to other terminal servers. Whilst organisations can have multiple terminal servers, they cannot link them together in order to centrally manage them in the way they can with Citrix.
With Citrix, however, organisations can set up a farm with any number of machines and a central management console, from which they can pick which ones they want to deploy and which they want certain users to target.
If an office suffers a disaster, such as a fire or flood then, as part of a DR strategy, organisations can have servers as part of a Citrix farm located at a different site so that critical users can work from home, simply by pointing their PCs at the other servers in the farm and continue working as if they were still in the fire or flood ravaged office.
And as well as offering a range of options to branch office networks, Citrix offers distinct advantages to single site organisations with a requirement for a considerable number of customisable applications, constantly requiring amendments, to stay up to date, or legally accurate.
In many instances, therefore, Citrix can help organisations box clever and save costs. Nevertheless, things are moving so fast in both the PC and the software world at the moment which is why organisations should always seek the advice of a specialist IT consultancy to advise on whether or not Citrix is the best way forward.
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Microsoft’s cannon has started pounding away at the
walls of the market fortress that VMware, the established
leader of server virtualization, has built.
It will take months for the initial fusillade, the results of
Microsoft’s Virtualization Deployment Summit in Redmond, to
clear enough to see if any of the mortars scored a direct hit
because Microsoft’s repeatedly delayed retort to VMware, the
free, catch-up, first-generation Widows Server 2008 hypervisor
widgetry called Hyper-V still won’t be out until at least August,
according to Microsoft, six months after the also delayed
Windows Server 2008 is finally released in February.
In the meantime, Microsoft’s assault is sure to send shudders
through VMware’s $31 billion market cap – already down 35%
from its October high on concerns over possible competition – if
for no other reason than the market is so darn skittish these
days.an acquisition of a California desktop virtualization start-up called
Calista Technologies Inc.; an expanded alliance with Citrix that
co-ops XenSource, the open source rival of VMware that Citrix
recently bought even more than it already was; price cuts for
large accounts running Windows in virtual machines; and the
reversal of a policy banning consumer versions of the Vista operating
systems, Home Basic and Home Premium, from being virtualized.
VMware claims to be leagues ahead of Microsoft and virtually
unassailable. It is supposed to have 80% of the market.
Microsoft says, tut, tut, the market is still small and VMware’s
grasp of it is narrow – less than 10% of servers – and even fewer
desktops – are virtualized because other people’s virtualization is
too complicated and cost-prohibitive.
Microsoft means to change the market’s size and economics
and, arguing strategic advantage, claims its soup-to-nuts desktop-
to-data center approach is more comprehensive than its
competitor’s, and unique in addressing virtualization at the hardware,
application and – especially – management levels.
Remember? Microsoft bought Softricity’s SoftGrid for application
virtualization widgetry in July 2006 and is supposed to
have sold four million copies.
Anyway, Microsoft has in mind a single set of management
tools for both physical and virtual computing and means to separate
the various layers involved in virtualization to suppress
restricting dependencies.
Microsoft calls its vision Dynamic IT as it explained to
300,000 customers and partners in an e-mail it sent out arguing
its case for an integrated approach, and saying that it believes
that “server virtualization will become ubiquitous” – a Pavlov’s
bell to Microsoft – and that virtualization is the way to self-aware
computers that “adapt automatically as business conditions
change.”
Microsoft’s emphasis this week is on the desktop, where it
figures VMware is weak. The purchase of barely two-year-old
Calista and Calista’s patent pending widgetry should give
Microsoft the ability to make a virtual desktop seem more like a
local desktop – particularly when it comes to fancy stuff like rich
media, video, Flash and 3D graphics – meaning Vista’s Aero
interface is no problem – and speed things up – despite virtualization’s
endemic overhead – by optimizing Microsoft’s own RDP
5.x protocol.
Calista’s web site says it can accelerate data as much as 20x
and eliminate the need for media player software – a point the
European Commission might want to make note of – as well as
eliminate software codecs – which ought to make the codecchallenged
Linux folks happy.
It’s supposed to integrate into three possible virtual desktop
architectures: multi-user virtual machine servers from VMware,
Xen and Citrix; single-user blade servers from HP and IBM; and
multi-user Terminal Server environments.
Microsoft hasn’t disclosed what it paid for the venture-backed
start-up and its compression technology though one analyst took
a shot and figured it was less than $100 million. Calista is backed
by Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners and
quotes IDC predicting desktops using virtualized client computing
will hit around 40 million seats by 2011.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has also tightened the screws on its
axis with its old friend Citrix, which is now supposed to develop
a tool that blithely transfers VMs between the XenSource’s
XenServer and Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V for the sake
of interoperability.
A test version of the tool is due next quarter and the final version
when Hyper-V ships.
Of course VMware already does this via a free utility.
But Microsoft and Citrix are also supposed to co-market widgetry
based on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Optimized
Desktop extended, they said, with the XenDesktop and Citrix’
Presentation Server.
However unlikely, according to Microsoft insiders, Forbes
speculates that Microsoft might eventually buy Citrix, which currently
has a market cap of $6.4 billion.
Microsoft says it will also cut the price of the Vista Enterprise
Centralized Desktop that enterprises buy under their Software
Assurance plans to run virtual desktops. It will go from $78 per
user a year to $23.
Microsoft will let customers virtualize different versions of
Office on the same machine too – to wit Office 2003 and Office
2007.
And in an about-face Microsoft changed its mind again and
decided to let low-end consumer versions of Vista be virtualized.
It previously argued that such a thing would create security
issues. There is no talk of that now.
The concession means that the lifespan of older applications
that will never make the jump to Vista will be extended. And
Microsoft will be able to pick up a few bucks in the process. It
also means that Mac and Linux boxes can run Vista without paying
a premium price for a one of the Vista business editions.
Microsoft says it will update its end-user license agreements
(EULAs) to reflect the change.
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