Today, CA announced that they have agreed to acquire Nimsoft for $350 USM (an all cash deal). Given their recent acquisition of 3Tera, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see that Nimsoft is another piece to their cloud playbook. It appears that CA is positioning itself to be a big player in cloud management. Nimsoft -- for those who don't know -- has software that monitors service providers.

Why would you want to monitor service providers? After all, doesn't the cloud obfuscate the service details and thus doesn't need monitoring tools?

Uhhhh, no. 

Although cloud allows IT organizations to externalize applications and workloads, providers still need to be monitored to ensure they are meeting service levels including performance, availability, security, chargeback, etc. Furthermore, the idea of transparency in the cloud is a bit of a myth. Customers really do need to know the vendor's underlying infrastructure so they can make intelligent decisions about whether or not the service provider can meet the application's requirements, avoid data management issues, be available, ensure security, etc.

So these moves (3Tera and Nimsoft) is about CA putting the pieces together to build a comprehensive suite to manage the cloud holistically, i.e. discover, monitor, configure, update, diagnose, provision internal and external cloud resources.

Now, it isn't all unicorns and rainbows. CA has a lot of work to do to integrate these pieces into a product suite (step 1) and convince customers that heterogeneous cloud management is the way to go (step 2) and is still missing a few ingredients (step 3)...because they are absolutely going to experience some competition in the cloud management arena. The virtualization vendors, cloud providers, and cloud brokers will also be moving to manage the cloud. Many of these potential competitors bring a lot to the table including "iTunes" like repositories of pre-configured workloads allowing users to easily spawn new services into the cloud, some have a stranglehold on the virtualization management space, some have large, established user-bases, others have ability to more than management services into the equation.

Should be fun to watch this space because it's a key area in the maturation of cloud computing.

[posted by: Drue Reeves]

This is going to be a quick post, but something that have been passionate about for some time so here it goes,

Let's start off this post with a number, 34!. Did you know that is how many SDK's we offer for extending or tieing into Citrix products. Thats a hefty amount of platform SDK's to build upon.

As developer's we are always looking for platforms to build on, enabling better integration into applications, providing a better user experience, etc. Weather it be for IT Administators or for traditional end user's we can use these SDK's as a platform to build on.

As mentioned earlier there are 34 SDK's available so lets break them down by product.

Category Related # of SDK's Notes XenApp 13 This covers things like MFCOM,Password manager, WI, Virtual Channel SDK, etc XenServer 5 XenServer Related SDK's XenDesktop 1 XenDesktop Related SDK's NetScaler 12 NetScaler Related SDK's Workflow Studio 1 Workflow Studio SDK's Citrix Online 2 These are the GotoMeeting and GotoAssist SDK's. Now even though you have to have a GTM or GTA account to get and use these, the point is they are still there.

Thats a pretty significant number of SDK's to start to build upon.

So what if you dont have access to a XenApp environment, not everyone has a datacenter and server farm in their backyard, right? Don't fret, there are a few options for you.
1) We offer a developer's version of XenApp along with a Developer license. This will give you access to XenApp free of charge and will let you start to built services/applications on today of the infrastructure.
2) Amazon EC2 - Will this service you can build you XenApp up in the Amazon cloud where you can start developing. This service does cost though, I believe it's aroun 15 cents an hour of uptime, but check with amazon to be sure!

You can download the Developer Edition of XenApp at the following location. Remember, you will need a MyCitrix Account in order to download.

On a final note, you might be saying, well how much stuff can we do, automate publishing an application?

Well, what could be some interesting user experiences where the SDK's could help. How about a single interface for all of your apps no matter what kind they are, Maybe a silverlight alternative to Web Interface (I think there is one like this already, at least there was long time ago), Maybe integrate Web Interface into you windows app (or a subset of it to facilitate some launching mechanism)? Maybe integrate MFCOM/Powershell into your custom provision system to add users to an application when they get access to it or write some Workflow Activities and make them available to the community? All of these things are possible with the use of the SDK's. Let's use these tools to develop some interesting scenario's. As developer's lets start to push the envelope!

Do you have any cool XenApp code that could benefit the community, head on over to the Citrix Community Site and participate.

As always, let me know what you think. You can find me at john dot mcbride at citrix dot com or you can catch my on twitter at @johnmcbride

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Delivering desktops as a service to users anywhere is already a reality that can be easily implemented, and is precisely the solution for tackling the challenges that healthcare IT is facing today. Virtual computing can help you dramatically reduce costs, improve patient care and satisfaction, and enhance operational efficiencies to meet your organizational challenges head on. ...

Hogan Consulting Group, Inc, a privately owned IT solutions provider based out of Chesterton IN, is pleased to announce that it has attained Platinum status in the Citrix Solution Advisor Program. This promotion in partner status makes Hogan Consulting Group the only Platinum partner in Indiana. ...

Citrix just announced Citrix XenApp 6 will be available for download on March 24, 2010! XenApp 6 was purpose-built for Windows Server 2008 R2, XenApp 6 is packed with a slew of new features and enhancements for advanced management and scalability, a rich multi-media experience over any network and self-service applications on any device ? from PC to Mac to smartphone....

In the following special episode of DABCC TV, Douglas Brown walks you through the new DABCC Virtualization News Player for the iPhone and iPod Touch! ...

In the following special episode of DABCC Radio, Douglas Brown will walk you through the new DABCC Virtualization News Player for the iPhone and iPod Touch! ...

Citrix today announced Citrix XenApp 6.. XenApp 6 offers major new enhancements that simplify computing for IT, including easier central management, enhanced enterprise scalability and seamless integration with Microsoft technologies like App-V and Windows Server 2008 R2. XenApp......

UniPrint today launched UniPrint Version 7.0. Incorporating an enhanced printer driver, UniPrint Version 7.0 significantly improves overall printing quality, speed, manageability and security for Windows and Mac users working in a 32- or 64-bit physical or virtual desktop environment. ...

?I?m extremely happy to announce the release of the DABCC Virtualization News Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch for download from Apple?s App Store!? ? Doug Brown...

We've heard it loud and clear that most XenDesktop implementations are based on either totally new Citrix implementation based on XenDesktop implementation and/or existing XenApp environments that are adding XenDesktop, whether based on XenDesktop for a distinct group of pilot users or presenting XenApp hosted apps through XenDesktop....

In my previous two posts, I've described how XenApp for 2008 R2 configuration can be defined as XenApp Template-based Management, and how it can be defined as Group Policy integration in XenApp for 2008 R2. Today I will cover some common questions I get when explaining this new configuration model. Please feel free to add yours in the comments sessions below, if I didn't cover here....

Hello Mac Enthusiasts,

Have you or your users ever said:

• I really like the Bring Your Own Computer idea and I want to use my Mac, but my company doesn't support Macs
• I wish I could use my Mac to run the same applications my windows PC can run
• I would like to be able to run Outlook on my Mac but Vbox and Parallels are too much work and add too much complexity to an otherwise user friendly OS

Then I have a solution for you...Citrix Receiver for Mac!

With Receiver for Mac, along with Citrix XenApp and Dazzle, you will be able to search for and run all of your favorite Windows apps as if they were locally installed on your Mac. After selecting your apps with Dazzle, our one-stop enterprise app store, you can launch your apps from the Applications folder. You can even drag those windows apps to the doc and run them from there! It's that simple. Coherence Mode...what's that? Virtual Machines...who needs 'em? With Citrix Receiver for Mac you don't have to worry about these things any longer.

Receiver for Mac is downloaded from and configured by the Citrix Merchandising Server. Receiver, as well as the Online and Dazzle plug-ins for Mac install in minutes and are properly configured. Try it today! All you have to do is download the Merchandising Server 1.2 from MyCitrix. Please take a moment to watch our announcement video here on CitrixTV!

As always please let us know your thoughts!

Aaron Videtto
Product Manager
aaron.videtto@citrix.com

Learn more about the XA 6 R2 Release

• Read XenApp 6 Press Release
• Watch XenApp 6 press announcement video
• Register for XenApp Tech Talks
• Learn more about XenApp 6
• Follow XenApp on | | |

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Today we announced XenApp 6 to continue building upon our vision of delivering on-demand applications and desktops to both virtual and physical hosts. XenApp 6 raises the bar for TCO and performance, and is also an integrated feature of our desktop virtualization solution, XenDesktop 4.

We don't usually talk about what it takes internally to develop a product. However, in this case it's worth knowing that this has in effect been a complete rewrite of the XenApp code base for the x64 platform. This clean slate effort really provided a fantastic opportunity to optimize the code base for performance and scalability and provides a solid new base on which we can continue to innovate. While this massive change is transparent to customers, I am very proud of our teams for accomplishing this with the additional pressure to innovate new features for our customers. Here are some of the highlights.

Yes we heard, make the management simpler! AppCenter is a new single management console and is something that our customers have been asking us to do for years, and we've added Powershell 2.0 support. A brand new code base provided us with an optimal opportunity to start fresh, I hope you like it and would love to hear feedback so we can continue to make it better.

Installation just got simpler by adding roles to the installation process. This means your Farm member servers can be installed in a way so they just focus on delivering desktops and applications and your Farm infrastructure servers can be installed to focus on all the Farm management and operational tasks. This improves reliability, scalability and performance with a rethink of our core architecture and a ton of smart code changes! Our goal at Citrix is to continue to simplify our products.

Policy management also just got simpler with Active Directory group policy support. Here's a good external blog from Nicholas Dille that gives some detail. I'd also encourage you to check out Juliano Maldaner's blog who is our lead XenApp architect.

XenApp 6 is a move to x64 and runs on top of Windows 2008 Server R2. We spent a ton of time optimizing for scalability to take advantage of x64. In our internal testing, we've really been pleased with the improvements. We've managed to run server farms with over 1000 member servers and 100,000 concurrent sessions. Whether you are an Enterprise customer or Service Provider your TCO for delivering desktops or applications just got better.

In the context of desktops use cases, I really believe that for structured task workers this makes a lot of sense. Not everybody needs or requires VDI and now with XenApp 6 you can build a much more compelling TCO business case as part of your desktop virtualization strategy. It's really important to understand that XenApp remains strategic to us as a core component of delivering desktops and applications with a fantastic TCO.

We've added isolation of services to our product line, that will increase the number of applications that you can support with XenApp. At the same time our partnership with Microsoft continues to get stronger and[ App-V integration|http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2009/07/13/Citrix+and+Microsoft+Expand+Desktop+Virtualization+Partnership+to+Simplify+Desktop+Management] is available. This let's XenApp focus on on-demand applications and user self service. App-V managed apps can now be delivered via Citrix Dazzle which empowers the end user to pick the apps they want. I really believe that these are the kinds of services that users want vs. IT trying to serve just basic needs and predicting what users will want. The world is moving to a consumer mindset and this is just the beginning.

We also spent a lot of time adding additional capabilities to HDX to enable better multimedia and peripheral support. I really like the improvements in audio quality to enable me to use VoIP softphones and the fact that I can now use OCS video due to broader USB device support. HDX for our entire product line is an area that we will continue to invest in and raise the bar. I look forward to sharing more in the future.

One question I often get asked is how can Citrix help us with application migrations? I want to point out App-DNA and that we are working very closely with them to help customers. I would encourage everybody to talk to them as your consider application migrations. They have a really good product that makes life simpler.

So there you have it folks. A brand spanking new XenApp that takes it to the next level for on-demand delivery of applications and desktops. It will be available for download on March 24th. I hope you like it, and as always Citrix is happy to listen to your feedback to help us make things even better.

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Announcing XenApp 6, the best on-demand application delivery solution! You probably have seen Harry's blog on this announcement giving a great overview of the effort involved in bringing this release to market. In addition to all the great features available today, XenApp 6 has the following new features and enhancements:

Citrix Receiver

The new Citrix Receiver for Windows supports eight languages with expanded support for plug-ins including Single sign-on, WAN acceleration, App-V and EasyCall. There is a new Dazzle-enabled Receiver for Mac. And for mobile devices, users can use Receiver on iPhone, Android or Windows Mobile to access applications hosted on XenApp 6

Dazzle

End users now have the freedom to subscribe to XenApp applications (including App-V packages) using Dazzle on their PC or Mac

HDX

Collaboration via Microsoft OCS Video conferencing. This HDX RealTime feature enables customers to host Microsoft Office Communicator on XenApp servers to enable end users to use their web cams for video conferencing. The solution even works for WAN connections and we have seen good results for connections with 200ms latency!

Enhanced audio through new audio codec technology. With the new "Optimized for speech" codec, HDX RealTime delivers clear audio quality to softphone and voice chat users with very modest bandwidth consumption (less than 20 Kbps). Any server rendered video will also benefit from the new "High definition" codec which provides CD quality audio using 90% less bandwidth

Enhancements for delivery of VoIP soft phones. Customers can deploy softphones (Avaya, etc.) on XenApp servers where the voice traffic can leverage the new HDX audio codecs and new client-side features like echo cancellation

True Multi-monitor support. The new solution expands our current Multi-monitor support by improving application compatibility when using Multiple monitors with better performance and quality

Support for Windows Portable USB Devices. This feature enables end users to plug in their USB devices (cameras, scanners, point of sale devices etc.) and seamlessly access them from their hosted XenApp 6 desktops and apps

AppCenter (Management)

Single management console. Administrators can now use a single management console to administer their entire XenApp farm. The management console has been completely redesigned for simplicity and performance

Active Directory Group Policy integration. XenApp policies and server/farm settings have now been added to Active Directory group policies enabling administrators to manage XenApp policies using their AD infrastructure. This simplifies customer environments and enables administrators to leverage all the Group Policy features when administering Citrix policies. For more details check out Juliano's blog series

Publish applications and load balance across worker groups. Administrators can now create "Worker groups" with one or more servers and publish applications and create load balancing policies across these worker groups. This simplifies application workload/silo management and ensures that all the servers in a worker group have the same applications and policies, thus eliminating 'configuration drift'

Simplified install. We have completely redesigned the install from ground up to make it simple, fast and intuitive. You can now install XenApp Platinum with all its features in a few clicks. Also, by separating the install from configuration we simplified XenApp deployments using Provisioning services or other image management solutions

Enhanced scalability and performance. Compared to XenApp 5, you will see about 15-20% more users increasing single server scalability and hence reducing the TCO of XenApp delivered applications and desktops

PowerShell SDK. Administrators can now use the power of PowerShell to automate XenApp management tasks. We have completely rebuilt the XenApp SDK using PowerShell

Windows service isolation for streamed applications. Applications like Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office 2010 (which is in Beta) install a windows service and can now be profiled and streamed using the new service isolation technology

Microsoft App-V support. Customers can now distribute App-V plug-in to end point devices using Citrix Receiver, publish App-V packages using XenApp and let their end users subscribe to App-V packaged applications using Dazzle

New Citrix license usage and trending reports. Customers can now obtain rich reports on Citrix license usage and trends. We integrated our license reports into EdgeSight and are making these reports available to all XenApp edition customers

Multi-lingual User Interface. XenApp now supports MUI enabling customers to deploy one XenApp server to serve a diverse group of user population who need access to their applications in their local language

In addition to these major features and enhancements, XenApp 6 is packed with other features like 32-bit color support, Graphics acceleration for WPF applications, Windows 7 smart card support, Web Interface, Single sign-on and SmartAuditor enhancements, etc. And we will release XenApp 6 to web on March 24th.

Learn more

• Read Press Release
• Watch announcement video
• Register for XenApp Tech Talks
• Learn more about XenApp6
• Follow XenApp on | | |

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As mentioned in Sai's post last week, Access Gateway is now available as a virtual appliance. This brings all the benefits of server virtualization to the network appliance space: rapid deployment, high availability, and quick recovery in response to hardware problems. ...

There have been a number of predictions that say that the Internet address space is going to run out either this year or next. And if you look at the numbers, then it looks like this might well happen soon. We all expect the Internet to see world wide adoption, with the biggest growth in Asia and Africa in the next 10 years. If we assume that "wide adoption" means that 20% of the world population have a device that they can use to connect to the internet, then we would need more than twice the number of /8 subnets than can be accommodated under the currently prevailing IPv4 addressing scheme (some say we'd need over 700 vs. the 256 available).

Traditionally, we have dealt with the shortage in IP addresses by creating private subnets (such as a company or home network) and arranging network address translation (NAT) at the edge. The level of separation between subnets and between each subnet and the wider Internet also provides an opportunity for inserting a firewall to provide more security. So, we have a way of putting off the event of running out of addresses and are doing it with a nice security advantage.

But we are using ever more devices that require a direct connection to the Internet. For example, the number of mobile phones with bowsers has exploded. Consumer devices such as games consoles are expected to communicate with others across the globe and from anywhere. A number of innovations in industry, retail, and transport sectors involve devices that can interact with others, and thus require an IP address.

The only solution to the problem is to substantially increase the address space, and IPv6 [RFC 1752] is the way to do this. IPv6 was developed into a standard between 1995 and 2006. In 2007, the OECD produced a ministerial background report on the economic considerations of a switch from IPv4 to IPv6. It identified the need for government action, and acknowledged that there would be a significant costs associated with a switch of this kind. And the benefit from the switch: the Internet keeps working ... without brown-outs ... but without any new features that can be sold to customers to help pay for the huge necessary investment. No wonder that Internet Service Providers are dragging their feet.  And enterprise network managers are equally worried, because renumbering a network is about the most frightening thing for them to undertake: it will break all sorts of things that cannot be predicted. In a period of economic slowdown, such jobs get put off.

There are also many rumours and stories abound on the differences between IPv4 and IPv6 . I found chapter 2 in "Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning" very well written. And it is available for you to read online here. If you are interested in the history of IPv6, the drivers for the change from IPv4 and a clear explanation of how IPv6 will deal with routing, multi-homing, plug and play autoconfiguration, quality of service, mobility, security, and renumbering, then I would thoroughly recommend you take a look at chapter 2 in this book.

 OECD report: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/7/1/40605942.pdf

RF 1752   http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1752.txt

"Global IPv6 Strategies: From Business Analysis to Operational Planning", chapter 2 "IPv4 or IPv6 - Myths and Realities": http://media.techtarget.com/searchNetworking/downloads/IPv4_or_IPv6.pdf

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Consider the following scenario:

• You enable streaming for virtual application packages on a Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2-based computer.
• You are granted the following permissions for the Package class:
  • Read
  • Distribute
  • Delegate
  • Create
  • Manage Folders
• You open the System Center Configuration Manager console.
• You try to create a virtual application package at the following location:

  Computer Management\Software Distribution\Packages

In this scenario, you cannot create the virtual application package. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

User <user> does not have sufficient rights

ErrorCode = 1112017920

If you're using Configuration Manager with your Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) packages then you can download the hotfix for this from our new Knowledge Base article below:

KB978755 - Error message when you try to create a virtual application package in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2: "User does not have sufficient rights"

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

With the iPad D-day looming you may be justifying ( or rationalizing ) whether or not you are buying an iPad in the first wave and what are you going to use it for. As noted on previous blogs lots of prospects have come up with business reasons to buy and use the iPad at work. I think this will grow rapidly as the early adopters show up to work with them ( BYOC ), find them to be useful and show them off....

While there's a growing interest in the availability of virtual appliances as well as physical devices, Citrix is keeping feet in both camps....