From a previous post there was a summarization of “Trout On Strategy“.  This is the kind of book that stays with you even though it is fairly short.  One of the ideas that has been floating around since reading it is that having a better product does not mean that it will be successful.  In other words, just because your product is perceived as being better inside the company, does not mean that customers will perceive it that way.

Jack Trout points out the only reality of what makes a product better exists within the mind of the consumer.  It is wrong to assume that building a superior product to the competition will be enough.  It is a mistake to think that by only pointing out the “truth” through sales and marketing will provide a market win.  The truth is that most consumers already think they know what is the best and that even though the products they use may be “inferior” there is little chance that they will change their minds.

Just think about Coke and Pepsi.  Pepsi fought for decades to convince people that Pepsi tasted better.  Instead of getting market dominance, they only got second place to Coke.  Later they realized that their opportunity came from targetting the “Pepsi Generation”.  So, it is not so much about direct comparison with an existing product that wins but rather positioning the product into an area that the current competing product was a weakness with.

It seems to be a common mistake for companies to focus on building a “better” product.  In the distant past Citrix was convinced that multiuser OS/2 applications was were the action was.  The engineering team worked very hard to produce what was in many ways better than the original OS/2 implementation.  They truly believed they had a product that could take on Unix for multiuser terminal users and win.  Unfortunately both the OS/2 and Unix market did not think so.  It was very difficult to convince people and even more difficult to translate this into revenue.  It was not until Citrix embraced supporting NetWare, DOS, and Windows 3.1 with remote applications that things began to turn around (WinView).  The turn around was largely based on customer feedback and the weaknesses of anyone else being able to produce a multiuser DOS and Windows system (without being based on DOS or Windows).

It is a hard lesson to learn with any company and even any product.  Engineers (and even executives) tend to fall in love with certain technologies and products.  This love can translate into the belief that it is the best possible solution.  The trouble comes from thinking that the battle is based solely on merit and that everyone thinks like an engineer.  Obviously this is not true.  People need to see what makes it different with a focus on an obvious weakness of the currently leading product.  What a producer sees as a difference that is better might not perceived that way by the customer.  For example, just by making it slightly faster or slightly cheaper is not going to get anyone that excited.  The difference has to be shocking and obvious.  Most likely it has to be a difference where the competition does not do anything even close to the same.

We tend to be most impressed by things that act differently (but better) than previous products.  Once our mind has latched onto that new product, we tend to shut out the newcomers unless they repeat the same pattern of being impressed.  For example, most Google users would not switch to Live search simply because they see no real benefit in doing so.  On the surface, they basically look the same.  It really isn’t about “better” if someone already has the mind share of that particular product space.  It’s more about ignoring the product strengths of competitors and targeting the weak spots extensively.  With Google, a number of weaknesses could be pinpointed if someone really wanted to attack their market.  The same is true of any product.  The key is becoming best at something the competitors cannot do or will not do.

I will end with a brief quote from Jack Trout that shows how difficult the challenge is to change minds:

The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing today is to try to change a human mind. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change.

 

      

 

Bill Gates - Looking Back, Moving Ahead

Just today I was looking for some Microsoft videos related to MMS 2008 when I located some video gems about Bill Gates and his history at Microsoft.  The Microsoft web site is providing a collection of videos for use with the press.  The primary video revolves around Bill Gates.  It contains some very interesting new material and includes a number of interviews with very famous Microsoft employees and even some of Bill Gates’ family.  The video collection is of very high quality and shows a great deal of production work went into it.  If you have any interest in Microsoft or Bill Gates, I highly recommend watching them.

To get the full list of videos, go here.

There are a number of stories from the various interviews that you might find interesting.  For example, there is a video clip dedicated to the 1978 picture of the original 11 Microsoft employees in Albuquerque.

In a way, the Bill Gates video is a summation of his work until now.  It was built to acknowledge his accomplishments during his departure in June 2008.  Regardless of how you feel about him, it is clear that he succeeded even though he dropped out of Harvard.

His Dad has a great quote towards the beginning of the video.  He basically says that “we didn’t know that we have something world-class going on in our living room”.  Nothing like a parent to set you straight :).  I’m sure it was a joke but it does indicate how proud his father is.

The main video is fifteen minutes long and is well worth it.  It is more like a documentary you would see on TV than a typical company promotional video.

      

The Virtual Hard Disk Image Format Specification (VHD Spec) has been available from Microsoft since October 2006.  You can bypass registration and download straight from here.

The document is only seventeen pages long but manages to capture how it is set up.

The specification was originally created by Connectix and was gained by Microsoft from the acquisition in 2003.  Since then VHD has become more and more successful.  It is used by all Microsoft virtualization products (VirtualPC, Virtual Server, Hyper-V) and is gaining support from Citrix products as well (PVS and XenServer).  VHD looks to be the rising star for Windows based virtual machines.

Strangely, I had the opportunity to meet the creator of the original VHD specification at a BriForum 2008 dinner.  Unfortunately I did not get his business card.  His career path took some strange turns based on working at Connectix, being acquired by Microsoft, working for Microsoft, leaving to work at Calista, and then being acquired yet again by Microsoft.  He was part of the Calista contingent at BriForum 2008 in Chicago along with Nelly Porter.

The VHD format has some tricks up its sleeve.  Two of these are related to disk types.  There are three basic disk types.  They are:

·         Fixed hard disk image

·         Dynamic hard disk image

·         Differencing hard disk image

Fixed disk is pre-allocated to the size specified at creation.  Dynamic disk allocates on the fly based on a certain chunk size (for example 2MB).  Differencing disk is where two or more images are combined to form one virtual disk image.  Differencing would allow for a primitive cloning to take place.  It is similar in concept to linked clones but without the protection of the base not changing.

Being a virtual disk, it has no concept of files.  File interpretation is based solely on the file system code in Windows (NTFS).  This is another way of saying it is a block-based model.

Given the momentum of VHD within Citrix and Microsoft, there is a good chance that VHD will be used for more tasks.  Microsoft has acquired Kidaro, for example, which would imply that VHD will get a major push for transporting VMs around the extended enterprise (read mobile and home workers).  Given the nature of the Kidaro TrimTransfer technology, it should be possible to make this as painless as possible.

There is a competing model at Microsoft under the banner of Windows Imaging Format.  Instead of focusing on disks, it focuses on files.  It uses Single Instance Store (SIS) and is being used for Vista deployment.  It is an excellent model for deploying large sets of files especially with small variations between copies (instances).

Both of these formats allow for mounting (VHDMount and ImageX) into Windows.  VHDMount comes from Virtual Server 2005.

The hope is that VHD will become the standard over time.  There is another format called Open Virtualization Format (OVF) that is set to work across all platforms in the future.  This new format is intended to supercede all existing formats and make it easier to transport workloads between vendors.

      

Given enough time, a problem leads to a solution.  REDFLY is the first product I’ve seen that addresses the problem with smartphones having too small screens and keyboards.  Actually, it is the first product that is not a laptop which is designed to make your smartphone much more usable.

It looks just like a laptop but it actually is an extension to the smartphone.  Using either a USB connection or Bluetooth, the link between the smartphone and REDFLY provides the ability to use the much larger screen, keyboard, and touchpad.

The REDFLY is specialized to support the smartphone and has eight hours of battery life.  It can even be used to charge the smartphone using the USB connection.

The REDFLY is stateless since it does not have a CPU or hard drive.  The cost of ownership is much less than using a traditional laptop device.

Because it is stateless, there is also no risk of losing data.  It also means that anyone can use it with their smartphone within a company since the REDFLY only extends the smartphone and has no settings of its own.

It is very clever specialization while also solving a common problem.  Small devices are in need of bigger devices to make the work easier.  In this case, the bigger device only has value as a device extension of the smartphone.

http://www.celiocorp.com/product/

What Can You Do With REDFLY?

• Thanks to REDFLY’s large screen and full keyboard, you can use your smartphone more and your laptop less. Most people don’t take full advantage of their smartphone’s high-speed data connection, powerful hardware and robust applications due to the limitations of smartphones’ tiny screens and cumbersome keyboards.

• REDFLY unleashes your smartphone making it easy to type long emails, check attachments, work with spreadsheets, make presentations, view websites, fully utilize CRM applications and connect to remote servers, desktops and applications from anywhere using your smartphone’s data connection.

• Use REDFLY’s two USB ports to connect a mouse, charge your smartphone directly from REDFLY’s powerful battery, or access data on USB Flash drives.

• Need an easy way to make presentations on the road without a laptop? REDFLY has you covered. Just plug a projector or large monitor into REDFLY’s VGA port and use PowerPoint Mobile to run the presentation.

• Have you ever tried to look up a contact, respond to a text message, forward an email or just get work done while having a mobile phone conversation at the same time? With REDFLY, you can use both hands on its large screen and full keyboard to fully access your smartphone and get the job done while talking to someone on your smartphone.

Pretty impressive stuff.  This REDFLY device shows the option of having a core device with very basic input/output while still being able to do full IO on bigger devices when they are available.  Overall this technology is not new but using it this way does seem interesting.

The real question becomes whether or not people would haul around a REDFLY and a smartphone.  Obviously the smartphone would need to be used in flight mode if on a plane.  Probably the most attractive part would come from wanting full access at places like customer sites and hotels.  Besides the fact that it would be much easier, I’m sure it would impress a few customers as well.  A REDFLY is much less likely to be damaged due to not having a hard drive and if it is stolen, there is no data lost.  It makes the REDFLY much more generic and disposable than a typical laptop.  This would translate into being able to pack it in checked luggage.

If any of you have a REDFLY and would like to leave feedback, that would be great.

I know that Citrix is interested because the REDFLY enables the nirvana vision formed many months ago by Chris Fleck.  It makes XenApp and XenDesktop much more usable from a smartphone.

Here is a video demo from Citrix Synergy:

Jason Conger Interiewing RedFly This is certainly an enabling technology.  If you get a chance I recommend learning more at http://www.celiocorp.com .  There is a datasheet at the site also. Thanks go to Jonathan Chin from Citrix AdProd Sydney for pointing REDFLY out.       

Some books get straight to the point.  Jack Trout, marketing guru, wrote a book called “Trout on Strategy” within the last few years that summarizes his experience with marketing over his very successful career.

There is not a high degree of content but it is easy to mistake simplicity and shortness with a lack of value.

Jack Trout is perhaps most famous for his views on positioning.

He starts out talking about too much choice leading to consumer confusion.  This aligns with Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice”.  As a result of this confusion, it is very difficult for companies to come out ahead unless they are perceived as being different in some valuable way.  The point is that any company is going to need a strategy to survive.

There is enough wisdom contained in this book that it would take several posts to discuss them.

Instead, this post is just to introduce some relevant ideas with the hope that future posts might wander over to the other areas.

The first idea to cover is that what marketing is really trying to do is to gain mindshare with the consumer.  It is commonly accepted that consumers only have so much room for product information and that consumers also do not like being confused.  There tends to be a desire to rank products relative to each other in a given category and usually competitors are viewed as having specific attributes.  The messages that have the most success are based on simplicity and newcomers have the most success with a message relative to existing category companies.

It is a common mistake to take on a competitor head on.  It is much wiser to find weaknesses with the competitor and focus on the attribute that can be used against that weakness.   Consumers see value in something the competitor cannot or will not do.

Trying to be an end all solution is only going to end in defeat.  Consumers prefer going to specialist than to generalist.  This makes more sense from a medical perspective ( patients would not go to the GP for everything).  Jack gives a great example of GE trying to convince companies that they can be the one stop provider for an entire power plant.  The power company refuses and points out that it wants the best provider for each category.  This is a hard lesson for any company looking to expand its business.

Customers do not always know what they want of even why they bought what they did.  This idea makes surveys and other customer interactions less valuable when developing a competing product.  Jack basically states that it is a myth that a consumer driven model will provide all the answers to success.

It is hard to accept that people do not like changing their minds.  He points out that it is much easier to add a relative point than to build an entirely new one.  Human minds have trouble grasping information not relative to what it already knows.  Accepting this human nature provides a much more accurate model for building the marketing story.

A company that specializes is much more likely to succeed and be understood by customers.  Customer undertstanding and simple marketing are directly tied.  The transition from product concept to actual product requires being seen as the expert with the best product.  It does not mean that the product is actually the best performing or the best tasting or the fastest.  It just means that the consumer believes it is the right choice based on the evidence that the main provider knows what it is talking about and only does that thing well.

Logically, the reality of the situation is defined by what the consumer thinks.  Reality is not based on any facts.  Facts are not going to make a successful product.  Facts are for science and the human mind is not based on science.

What seems to be true based on this advice is that a new company needs to be different in some way in order to succeed against the current companies in that field.  It has to stake a claim on a new aspect of the field in order to get the attention it needs to survive.   Once it has a foothold, it needs to continue on a path that is simple and well understood.  Once more momentum builds, it needs to keep showing that it is the expert and that consumers would benefit in its differences.  It needs to reduce its desire for growth for the sake of satisfying “Wall Street”.  It also needs to keep its roots with the customers intact.  Consumers gain a solid performer that can be trusted and the company gains a life and provides work for many employees.

I would recommend reading this book just for understanding the dos and donts of marketing.  Even for those of us not in marketing, it is still interesting.  It’s always good to hear from a specialist.

      

DayJet has just announced on September 19 that it is no longer flying.

As of September 19, 2008, DayJet Services, LLC, has discontinued its jet services and cancelled all future flights as a result of the company’s inability to arrange critical financing in the midst of the current global financial crisis.

Ed Iacobucci is no longer the CEO but is still the Chairman of the Board.  The specifics are listed in the press release.  Most of the employees have already been let go.

Not every venture is going to be successful, but it is a shame that this is DayJet’s fate.  It had been gaining quite a bit of momentum this last year and there does seem to be a connection with difficulty in getting more funding.

This is Ed’s second company as founder.  Citrix was the first.

      

 

 

InfoWorld has posted a review of XenDesktop just recently.  XenDesktop rated 8.3/10.  The review covers the highlights and explains how things fit together.  It’s good to see independent analysis.

Richard Croft in Sydney gets credit for finding this one.

This is something which I’ve wanted to do for quite some time.  Here are the three official logos Citrix has had over its history beginning in 1989.

 

Citrix Logos 1989-2008

The first logo lasted from 1989 to 1996.  The second logo was used from 1997 to 2007.  The third logo is still in use.

It’s rare to see them close together, especially the first one.  Looking back, the first one actually looks a bit skinny and sparse.

The most obvious change with logo three is the dots changing color from orange to black.  Overall the banner for Citrix has not changed much over time.  The adjustments are fairly minor.

On the other hand, our products have changed names quite often.  The path to XenApp can be traced back to roots in Multiuser from 1991.  Our first popular product was WinView with WinFrame soon after.  This lead to the deal with Microsoft and beginnings of MetaFrame.  A few years later there was MetaFrame XP, MetaFrame Presentation Server, Presentation Server, and finally XenApp.  The core idea has remained largely the same but the features have advanced.

Given the timing of the logo changes (8 years, 10 years as gaps), there is a good chance that the logo will change about 9 years from now.  It is a touchy subject to change the logo since it leads to confusing people if the change is too radical.  Most likely it would be a minor change.

Sometimes you find extremely interesting information on the Internet.  It usually corresponds to someone doing heaps of work and then reporting results for something you are interested in.  The recent discovery came from the BrianMadden.com site about a report on Application Virtualization.  Michael Keen introduced an application virtualization comparison document written by Sven Huisman and Matthijs Haverink of QNH Infrastructure BV.

The comparison document does a great job of capturing the current players and also their relative strengths and weaknesses and would be useful for people considering using application virtualization in their companies.

This is the kind of advice you would expect to be coming from a third party.  Obviously any of the participant companies are not going to paint it the same way.

What I like is that Application Virtualization is becoming more main stream and obviously it is maturing enough that it is being followed this way.  There is still room for improvement and hopefully we will be seeing some great strides in the next couple years.

There are people in the hardware virtualization camp that don’t see application virtualization as a serious threat.  That could change and much faster than expected.  Currently it seems like Windows is its own worst enemy and this is part of the reason why doing a full VM solution is sometimes necessary.  Perhaps Microsoft will be considering some new architectures to allow for better decoupling between the applications and the operating system.  There are some early indications that they might be thinking about it.

A new potential trend is having it so application developers make their applications virtual from the beginning.  This would be possible with Xenocode without too much trouble.  The value here would be that you would never need to install and that it would be fully supported by the software provider.  Virtual applications are highly portable and if done well do not really care about underlying hardware or software.  They leverage what lies beneath them but they also don’t get tangled up in depending on things in the base.

The message is still fairly new compared to the last round which could be called application streaming.  Each new participant company brings more to the table and makes it that much more compelling.

Currently Microsoft seems to really have a following with the former Softricity product which is now called APP-V.  This was highly obvious during BriForum 2008 in Chicago.

Last pitch is that the document is a great intro the application virtualization space and it would be worth reading even for a more advanced administrator.

Earlier this year, Citrix created a new track as part of Citrix Synergy in Houston.  This track, which was called “Geek Speak Live”, was intended to address the more technical aspects of Citrix products.  Not only that, it was intended to be largely driven by outside speakers.

The new model was very successful and addressed a gap in the standard Citrix events.  Traditionally Citrix has not satisfied the needs of the most technical administrators, analysts, and resellers.  The typical statement heard is that Citrix events are too marketing based.

“Geek Speak Live” was Citrix’s first serious attempt to bridge the gap and bring the technical community online.  Much work was put together by the evangelist group to try something different.

Keep in mind that Citrix’s VDI offering had just been released (XenDesktop) just earlier on the first day.  Later that evening, Shawn Bass gave a presentation about the limitations of VDI.  I just discovered this week that his VDI speech is available from Brightcove.  When this first happened (quite a few months ago) it caused a stir within Citrix.  Some people saw it as inappropriate, especially based on XenDesktop just being released.  I didn’t have enough evidence to judge then.  From the general reactions inside the company, it had seemed that perhaps Shawn had gone too far.

However, now that I have seen Shawn at BriForum and have seen this video, I would conclude that the initial stir was a misunderstanding.  Perhaps people saw Shawn as bashing VDI when really he is just trying to warn about the current limitations.  He is trying to deflate the hype curve and make people realize the true value of VDI.

Shawn is a very clever and passionate person.  He strongly believes that the truth be told.  This was obvious during BriForum on the topics he covered there.  If Shawn is telling you to watch out for something, then it would make sense that you should.

Another aspect of this that only through constructive criticism will products improve.  VDI is destined to get quite a bit better in the next few years.  Shawn’s observations highlight the areas that need the most improving.  As he said during the session, VDI should not be seen as a panacea.

Based on several comments during BriForum, technical people are hungry for technical content.  They, in general, are fed up with marketing messages.  Along with that, they want the freedom to express their opinions.  They want honesty and they want to be heard.  So many times, the word “refreshing” was mentioned at BriForum compared to the typical iForum format.  It is very good timing that Geek Speak Live exists and the hope of everyone is that it will continue for the next Synergy/iForum.

The key message that was repeated often is honesty is always better.  If the product has limitations, then those limitations need to be known.  Customers who are misled will remember the deception and be unlikely to try it again.  Expectations set at the right level are more likely to lead to a long term relationship.

A good analogy is dating.  You can start off by pretending to be something that you are not.  You might even fool the other person for some time.  Eventually your true self is going to emerge and the party is over.  On the other hand, if you are only you and confess to your weaknesses, it is the other person that decides if they can handle it.  You have given them the power to choose versus trying to misled them.  If they decided that they don’t like you for who you really are, then it was not meant to be.  It is far better to know up front than to make it to a much a later stage where everyone has wasted their time.

In this way, it is better to be straight forward.  The customer will respect the honesty and be more likely to trust what is being said.

Having written all this, it is now time to say that Shawn had a lot of guts to say what he did.  Brian Madden thought Shawn was either brave or naive to give such a presentation.  However, Brian also confessed that “Shawn is my hero”.  Potentially Shawn could have damaged his relationship with Citrix.  I have heard nothing to say this is the case.  I would interpret the results something like this:  Citrix opens floodgates, Shawn takes Citrix for its word, Citrix realizes it might have opened too wide, Citrix then realizes later that this is the price of allowing open communication.  Truthfully, I see this particular incident in a very positive light.  One of the most dangerous things you can do is believe your own hype.  Sometimes you need someone to remind you of this fact.

In June, Adam Jaques from the Advanced Products Group in Sydney demonstrated the Citrix ICA client on an iPhone.  The video is on YouTube and can be seen from here:

Keep in mind that this is just a demonstration.  If you see this as a valuable thing, please request it either through your normal channels of communication or fill in the poll below:

View Poll

The real question is whether or not you want support with the iPhone and Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp.

Same Environment

Did you know that the majority of the business world uses Windows for its desktop operating systems?  Of course you did.  Did you also know that by doing so, the user is guaranteed to get a greatly varying experience when using different machines?  Maybe.  Okay, here comes the really tough question.  Do you think this should be possible to have people move around to different machines and get the same experience.  Maybe yes?

The more I understand the problem, the more I realize that Windows was never meant to be moved to another machine.  There are exceptions to the rule but in general it stays put.  Once you install Windows and load up the applications, there is little change of migrating the platform somewhere else.

Windows is essentially tied to its hardware roots.  Certainly it is possible to build solutions based on either virtualization or remote execution (think RDP or ICA), but this is not quite the same thing as a true native solution.

Out loud, I’m wondering why this hasn’t been a bigger requirement.  I mean, why wouldn’t you want to be able to move from machine to machine and get your own environment?   Why wouldn’t you want your own desktop on a new platform?  Technically it is possible.  Obviously it would be easiest coming from the group that wrote Windows.  So far there has been little hint of it.

It seems that the general public is not aware of the possibilities.  If they knew, they would probably realize they have wanted this all along and start demanding it.

The most obvious use case is a worker that switches between working at work and working at home.  Given that the user is going to demand the best performance and expect also the flexibility of using either a work or home machine, they are going to want the same “face” to their same desktop.  This would include everything the user would expect to get access to including user data and applications.  The desktop should look exactly the same except for differences in screen sizes.

There is the option of adding in extra bits that only the local machine has but at this point it seems better to exclude the options.

How could this happen?  Probably the first step is finding a decent way of isolating Windows away from the hardware.  As crazy as it might sound, there is a need for a layer between user mode and kernel mode related to switching devices on different platforms.  Let me say it a different way.  There should be a way to allow for loading of different drivers based on the underlying hardware.  It’s incredibly simplistic to say it this way but basically it would need a detector/loader driver so that it could appropriately load the current driver based on the current platform.  Currently Windows seems a bit fixated with what it was installed with.  I’m sure there are techniques that already do this today.  Basically we just want Windows to be able to load on different platforms with the same disk image.  Provisioning Server has a feature like this but it is not quite what I have in mind.

Once you have a system that can load the basics, then you need to make sure that all the user’s relevant data and programs come with.  This becomes a venture in packaging and execution.  Everything should work and hopefully not be too big.  From a user’s point of view, they get what they are used to.  From an IT point of view, you have just extended out what you can support.

It would be far easier to contain the environment in a virtualization container.  This is both good and bad.  It’s good because it will probably work straight away.  It’s bad since it will not always produce the performance that is expected.

I admit that this is a bit of a wandering post.  I’ve been trying to come to grips with aspects of Offline VDI.  A number of new techniques are coming to mind.  However, it still comes back to one question.

Is it reasonable to assume that a user’s environment should be allowed to be portable?  By this, I am not just talking about user profile information.  I am talking about potentially duplicating the same environment between many different machines which are worked from.

Last year Kevin Kelly gave a presentation about the next 5000 days of the web.  His views are based on what happened in the first 5000 days (roughly 13 1/2 years).  The profile for Kevin reveals a very thoughtful man.  He is in a good position to imagine what the future will bring.

Instead of talking about existing and emerging technologies, Kevin instead focuses on the more likely outcomes in the more distant future.  The point that stuck with me is that the impossible is going to be possible.  The same point of view could be expressed at the beginning of the web.  Many impossible things became common place.  And somehow, we take this for granted now.

He says “It’s amazing, and we are not amazed”.  How true.  It is only when there is a major shift that we take notice.  There is a counter point to his idea.  If we do not grow up with the technology as being new, we are more likely to be impressed.  This means older people (older than being born in the early to mid 80s) are far more likely to be impressed with the evolving web.  I admit that I am often amazed by what has happened in such a short period of time.  Perhaps if I was younger I would take it much more for granted.

He also says that originally the web was thought of as “being like TV but better”.  This model proved to be untrue.  It is clear now that we tend to shove new ideas under existing ideas to better understand them.  The web was not TV and except for the ability to playback shows, will never be the same as TV.

Kevin then states that the first lesson of the web is that we “have to get better in believing the impossible”.  This just means that things that were perceived as impossible in theory were actually possible in practice. 

This is just summarizing what Kevin says in the video.  I don’t want to give it all away but will focus on the topics that most interest me.

Kevin sees the web as a more organic mechanism that resembles the human brain in complexity.  He sees the web as a single machine which also happens to be the most interesting machine humans have ever created.  The parallels with the brain are reflected in current measurements of both the web and average brain.  Currently we are sitting at the equivalent level of one human brain based on connections and neurons.  Kevin projects that in 30 years we will reach the equivalent of 6 billion human brains on the web and therefore the web will surpass raw human computation (which assumes that only 6 billion people will be alive then).

The shift in his thinking is based largely on treating the entire web as one machine.  This is where cloud computing is heading along with the rest of the computer industry.  Isolation is becoming more and more rare as machines are becoming more linked together than ever.  Devices become windows into the machine.

There are three categories of change coming in the next 5000 days.

1. Embodiment
2. Restructuring
3. Codependency

Embodiment means that we are going to incorporate more different types of devices to make the web even more diverse.  This includes things like mobile phones and other portable devices.  As things become more and more digital, the more likely it will participate with the web.  Many of the new models being put forward mix hardware in reality with virtual things in the web.  The web will also be seen as the owner of all the bits so that locally stored things will only be there for the sake of caching or offline use.

Restructuring comes with the concept of linking together data instead of just pages.  This calls for a much more intensive linking mechanism that would cross over many current boundaries.  There are some brief examples today of how this would be useful but the overall story has yet to be developed.  I would see this as an exploration in linking data together in a way that is much more natural and helpful to the users.  It would be of much more use currently in individual companies.  In a way, it addresses the need to search for relevant topics.  Links would already exist between similar ideas or objects and instead of searching, the points could be traversed.  It is a very different idea from how the web is deployed today.

Codependency comes from unloading the need to remember things.  The web will become our memory in a way.  When we need the information, we will just retrieve it when we need it.  This process is due to become more and more simpler.  The web will become further entrenched in our lives and we will become more dependant. 

The video is worth watching and is certainly much different than other talks given about the future of the web.  Even though several points could be challenged, it is not hard to see that the overall vision has merit.  Perhaps the overall message is that the machine is being built and will evolve based on our needs but we are not necessarily in full control of the overall path given its worldwide nature. 

Citrix, by comparison, is only about four years older than the web.  So many things have changed since 1989 and there are still so many things left to do.  At least it is much more clear what will happen based on our own experiences as a company.  It might be nice to conjure up a post about the future of Citrix based on its past.  That will have to wait for another time. 

Thanks Kala for the link to this video!

As promised, here is the poll on why you would not select VDI.  Keep in mind that you can select multiple reasons and that if you are not happy with the selections you can add your own text description on Other.

View Poll

Results are public.  Please comment on what you find lacking in the current VDI solutions in the market.

This is the first poll for CitrixBlogger.org. To test the idea of using the poll, the topic of VDI has been selected. Here is a chance to vote for why you would pick VDI as a solution. The results will be visible to all. The “other” category allows for entry of other possibilities. Please vote once only. The results will interesting for those inside Citrix. However, do not consider this an official Citrix poll.

View Poll

After the this poll, the other question “Why are you not adopting VDI anytime soon?”.

By the way, you can select as many items as you want.  If you feel there are more than one important reason to adopt VDI, please select them.  The results should indicate the most important reasons for adopting VDI.  Please remember that you can choose other and specify what you think is missing from the list.

“ICA Stream” is the oldest idea I have in the product ideas database. It was submitted March 23, 2002. The basic premise was being able to record and playback ICA sessions. This idea later became a part of Project Iris and eventually became a product called “SmartAuditor”. This first submitted idea was a trial balloon to see how well the product ideas database worked.

It took a number of years for the project to finish due to some gaps in development. Initially the company was not overly excited about the project but over time it must have realized that it had value in the market. From a compliance point of view, it makes perfect sense even though I never intended it to go that far. Some people might think that this kind of capture could be seen as being a bit like “Big Brother”. Like any other technology, how it is used is based on where it gives the most value. In this case it is largely used by financial institutions to guarantee integrity. In theory, the more people involved, the less likely something will go wrong or someone will try to commit a crime.

Anyways, here is the original related text:

I have had some ideas about ICA Stream for some time and I’m glad that I am finally writing them down. Basically the idea is to take advantage of being able to record and playback sessions. I know work has already been done on this with AdProd but it has not progressed beyond that. Another idea of ICA Stream is the ability to broadcast to multiple players at the same time. This would give us the ability to broadcast one stream, which may or may not be recorded. The power of this is that we would not need to worry about scaling since MetaFrame does not need to support the ’splitting’ of the session to multiple clients.

ICA Stream also makes it more real to have a collaboration server. Most of the data will be outgoing from the initial point of view, but it does allow for the rapid transmission of new information.

Some of the ideas are still a bit raw but I wanted to express them to start some discussion. I can see this product fitting into the Virtual Workplace vision, but not quite from the angle that has been presented to this point.

If you have any questions about these line items, please send me an email. I could spend a lot of time trying to explain these ideas but I will instead assume that you already know what I am talking about.

Ideas
—–

• Treat ICA like it is something that can be recorded and played back
• Allow users to access these ICA streams to get desired information
• Provide a way to transmit any information to anyone as fast as possible
• Make the web interface more alive with live data feeds using ICA Stream
• By broadcasting one ICA Stream, it is possible to support many users at once
• Allow companies to track transactions (banks, ordering, reservations)
• Recordings can be selected at any time and require no MetaFrame resources
• Act as if ICA is a TV broadcast - some people have no need to interact
• One ‘teacher’ could demonstrate with MetaFrame to an unlimited number of ’students’
• Support primitive interactivity by creating ‘click zones’ for clicking on
• Selected zones act as hyperlinks to other streams or positions in current stream
• ICA Stream can be fully ‘live and interactive’ if it is ’solo’ or ‘teacher’ mode
• ‘Teacher’ role can change to another person just like a typical meeting
• ICA Stream data could be fed to non-PC devices potentially (mobile phone, PDA)
• Well suited for environments that have trouble with latency (Satellite, GPRS)

Benefits
——–

• ICA is much more efficient than other Session playback techniques
• Can broadcast one ICA session to many clients (very good for scaling)
• On-demand ICA Stream sessions
• Good for education/training, news/live data update, or system monitoring/auditing
• Excellent for presentations and tele-conferences
• Possible to extend concept with limited interactivity (menu select, next slide)
• Possible to mix with fully interactive sessions
• Different streams could be played based on user selecting other paths

Features

——–

• Auto-detect bandwidth and best fit the closest matching ICA Stream
• Live and Pre-recorded ICA Streams
• Pre-configured color depths and resolutions for sessions on MetaFrame
• Audio support
• Uses ICA Stream Player to receive ICA Stream
• ICA Stream Server (Responsible for ICA Stream transfer to clients)
• ICA Stream Player (Play Session)
• ICA Stream Recorder (Record Session)
• ICA Stream Editor (Edit Recorded session)
• Can operate in either messaging or streaming mode for data (UDP versus TCP)
• Data between MetaFrame and ICA Stream Server should be highest quality (audio/video)
• ICA Stream Server should have filters to reduce quality based on connection
• Stream connections can support Rewind, Fast Forward (recorded), Pause, Play
• ICA Stream elements could be cached (sounds, bitmaps)
• Could use CSG for secure ICA Streams
• ICA Stream Server could re-mix stream based on connection (high, medium, low bandwidth)
• Directory of resources available from ICA Stream Server (streams, stream properties)
• Security model for granting access to ICA Streams
• Use Internet multicasting if it makes sense

Obviously not everything was done for this idea. It was a tall order. For awhile the product seemed like it was not going to make it through. However, it did and from what I have heard it is doing well.

Why am I sharing these ideas? There are a few different reasons that come to mind. Perhaps the first is to show that Citrix has been thinking about certain topics for a number of years. The second reason might be to see how much interest there is still remaining in these topics. Probably the real reason is spend some time looking through the archives to find anything interesting to bring back to share.

I’ve been interested to hear more about how other technology companies generate ideas and it is so rare that I hear any decent details. Being that I have only worked for IBM and Citrix, I’m also certain that my view of creating ideas would not match the rest of the industry.

Perhaps this is because ideas are considered to be quite valuable and the companies do not want to disclose. I would argue that ideas are almost useless unless they are acted upon like a hedgehog from “Good to Great”. It’s really not the idea anyhow. An idea is like a match. If it catches, it creates a much bigger fire. If it is never used or never starts a fire successfully, it just sits there. The match can start something big but only if conditions are right. The same is true of ideas. Without the willingness to try and the ability to support the right decisions, the idea will wither and die.

This just means that we make ideas more important than they really are. There are probably millions of good ideas on the Internet. It is much more difficult to do the work needed to make any of those ideas a success. The glorification of ideas goes back a long way. The realization that this does not actually accomplish anything by itself is a much healthier way of looking at it.

This idea was documented in an email on May 30, 2003. It had been an idea that I had advocated from years before but it seemed like a good time to document it with the hopes that it would get better chances. The basic idea was to sell a single user version of our main product for use on consumer computers. During the early 2000s, there was a strong push to have more products with the hopes of raising more market share and more business in general.

Here is the idea:

This idea for a single user ICA server has been around for quite some time but I wanted to formalize why it is important.

1. Gets us into the consumer market so that people can use it at home and on their workstations
2. Potentially gives us a product that is extremely popular with consumers that give us better name recognition
3. Allows for sharing applications between users using the machines they are working on
4. Avoid issues that multi-user situations brings to applications (all apps should work given enough bandwidth)
5. We can charge money for this and improve our income
6. Could be sold in retail markets
7. Would encourage people to further invest in Citrix technology in the MetaFrame suite
8. Allows for the allocation of one machine per user which would guarantee performance and usuability.
9. Lower cost entry point to using Citrix technology
10. Single user server could integrate into Citrix farms for the intent of publishing one app to one user
11. It solves the problem of getting the user to their desktop to run their desktop apps if they are remote

The first problem with getting to be a $1 billion dollar company is to get people to know who you are. The easiest way to do this is sell them products that they can use. We currently do not sell to users. We sell to companies and IT managers. Some users do not even know they are using Citrix technology. Having a consumer product is a big step forward to having people know what you do.

That is why people will pick big software companies first since those companies usually have a strong consumer presence (like Microsoft).

Technically, I do not think it is difficult to do this product. The base is already with Windows XP and a prototype has already been done with Jardine.

If we do decide to go ahead with this project, we have the potential to greatly expand our business.

This idea was not rejected but marked for revisit in 2004. As far as I know, it was not revisited.

XenDesktop with PortICA was first to address the single user solution. Jardine got bogged down with Microsoft since it used Terminal Services API.

It is unknown if this would have really made a difference to Citrix. At this point most people that use remote connections in the consumer market would use Microsoft RDP. It helps to be built in. In most cases the consumers aren’t even aware of what is going on. Microsoft has done a great job of blending it in.

Even now there is an opportunity to make PortICA a standalone solution. If it was enabled this way, it would essentially allow for this idea to exist fully. Many customers have asked for a standalone version in the last few months. There is a sense that some don’t want a full VDI implementation and just want an integrated Citrix experience.

Here’s another idea ahead of its time. This one also came from iForum 2003, but from a different customer.
At the time it seemed like a largely unsolvable problem with MetaFrame. This has since changed with the advancement of virtualization and the implementation of XenDesktop.

Here’s the text:

A customer was asking for the ability to recover sessions during iForum in Sydney.
Essentially there are looking for “rock solid” application connections.
Given the nature of networks, this seams like a pretty big request.
I think this request belies a bigger request for being able to have sessions that are fault-tolerant.

The faults could happen at many different places:
Network (down)
Hardware (faults)
Software (exceptions)

Based on the potential for error, it is fairly easy to see that it would be impossible to guarantee 100% up-time. However, we could greatly improve what we do today.

1. Change ACR to be at a transport layer level so that the user does not experience the session going away until the transport layer has died after a given retry duration and count. It is very important for the user to think it is still running even when it is in the process of reconnecting. This is definitely an image issue.

[ This did change not long after. Connections look alive even if the connection has errors.]

2. Use a RAID-like strategy for running applications. Have multiple sessions controlled by the same user input. I know this would be more difficult than it sounds but it would allow for instantly switching from a bad session to a good session in potentially a fraction of a second.

[Interesting but impractical. Divergent states would not be prevented.]

3. Potentially use record/playback to recreate session states. This does not seem as promising since states can change (files for example) and playing back the stream would not get you to where you want to be.

[This also sounds good but wouldn't work]

4. When you have multiple sessions running to support fault tolerance, have them talk to each other (master slave relationship) so that the sessions will always be in sync even if one goes down.

[Better, but certainly would not work universally]

5. Run the different copies of the same sessions on different machines in case the hardware fails.

[Hints of virtualization but not quite]

Another concept that come out of this is the idea of “Always on” applications.

This just means that for a given user, a certain application is always guaranteed to be running. This would be great for re-connect times and also would give the image of permanence to the user. For example, I would love to have a copy of Outlook “Always On” so that I could quickly check my email without having to fully start a new session. I know this can be done with disconnect times and other tricks but it would be a big coup to be able to say that a server will always be on with your app waiting and running.

[This would be an easy win if Citrix ever decided to push this angle. The technology for this is already there but it would require essentially getting rid of timeouts and making re-connections super smooth]

Back to 2008…

Session recovery is another one of those requirements that has been around for most of Citrix’s history. It is only recently with virtualization that it is possible to move VMs from one host to another. This concept overlaps well with how XenDesktop is built. Companies such as Marathon have focused on making Citrix fault tolerant.

However, the dream of moving around an individual session on XenApp seems almost impossible.

There was a brief glimmer of hope with the announcement of Luflogix from Brian Madden, but alas it was only an April Fools joke.

Given the age of the requirement and also the potential applications, there is a renewed possibility this could be addressed using modern technology.

The first step is to realize that there is a real need. The second step would be to setup a research project within Citrix Advanced Products. As a result, hopefully customers will finally get the ability to guarantee session permanence regardless of failures or location.

Once you get a session that can live forever, the next logical step is to find a way to move it to anywhere else in a self contained aspect. As usual, this kind of thinking is a bit ahead of the curve.

In recent developments Offline VDI has gained much interest. Offline support has been a common request of Citrix for many years. Until virtualization came around, it looked pretty hard to accomplish this goal in a believable way.

I was busy searching for interesting old ideas in the Citrix Product Ideas database and stumbled across Idea 420 entitled “Offline access”. This idea came straight from a customer and I just tried to capture it and form some guesses about how it would be done.

For amusement purposes only, I’m including what I wrote for that idea. Remember that this happened May 22, 2003 right after iForum in Sydney.

Offline Access

I was asked for this at iForum by a customer.

His assumption was that if he was working on something that he could continue to work on it even if he was not online. His then would later sync up whatever work he had done when he connected again.

This might work fine in a file-based world, but does not carry forward very well in Citrix’s area of expertise.

It brings forward the idea of what kind of work a user would be doing remotely AND offline.

Most common practices are to either work on documents or presentations.

It would be rare for them to expect that they would be able to talk to a server since they are indeed offline.

So, they are only confused about how the work is being done. If they knew that they were really working online all the time with the server and the software being on the server, they would not ask for offline access since that would mean they would know that they could not run the app on their client.

But, they do not seem to know this. There is nothing wrong with this since it really shows how transparent we have made things work for them.

So, there really only seems to be a few options.

1. Tell them to install the server app software on their client and then manually copy the files back and forward

2. Create a process for automatically installing apps that will be run offline on the client and have a sync method to go between server and client

3. Pretend that we are the software and treat everything like a generic case and later sync up any changes [??? don't know what this means in 2008]

4. Create a new model that makes it less obvious where things are running so that it can happen on the server or client with or without a connection

5. A miracle

I think I like number 2 the best. It is the most practical and I would think that Microsoft would probably chose that kind of model. Of course this means that you would probably have to install the likes of Office on clients that might not support it, but at least it would run as the customer would expect. The syncing feature would also be useful since it would mean that it would probably be better than what people do normally when they go on the road. There is even a good chance that these users would already have the native apps on their client and all they really want is the ability to work on these documents/presentations in a more transparent fashion. For example, if I am offline, use the copy I checked out. If I am online, use the copy from the server that I have just checked in again. I suppose that a library model (books) would work well in this case. This concept would not work well in a database type environment where the file is huge and many people might be working on it. The best you could do is check out a section of the database that you wanted to work on (if this was possible) and then take it on the road. I think that people are still going to get confused but we can do a lot to improve the situation when the user is offline.

Regards,
Jeff

Returning to 2008…
I got a good chuckle on option number 5. This all happened before the advent of the possibility of doing Offline VDI for such a trick. Things have become much more apparent since then. It’s still not completely clear but it is not as far off as 2003 was.

Even with the current visions, it is not obvious how this could be made transparent. The ultimate model would call for dual execution so that the local copy would take over when the network is lost. At the current pace this is still years away and could require a remodeling of how applications work. In the non-Windows world this is already happening for the sake of web applications. Newer applications are becoming more tolerant of offline access.

The current vision focuses on taking a VM, checking it out, and running it on a laptop. Once the offline mode is over, the user then needs to check the changes back in. The good news is that this concept is very easy to explain and understand. The bad news is that it is difficult to achieve and tends to ignore the limitations of moving and syncing VMs. Baby steps moves the technology forward regardless of the pace.

Sometimes (if not most) it is just as important to sell the pitch to the consumers in a simple way instead of how it ultimately might be deployed. In other words, engineers often make the mistake of being technically accurate and usually deluge non-technical consumers (including internal non-engineers). This tends to polarize internal opinions to match the simpler model since the more precise model cannot be understood.

Having Offline VDI support would benefit Citrix customers based on the assumption that offline access has been an outstanding requirement for many many years. Obviously if people are asking for it over and over, it must have a valid business model that would help both sides.

In 1995, Gartner invented the concept of the Hype Cycle chart. It depicts the life of a new technology and how people perceive it over time. Below is the first chart displayed by Gartner in 1995.

The lessons to learn from such a diagram is that new technologies always go through a phase of intense expectations. There are five stages that have been identified. They are:

1. Introduction
2. Peak expectations
3. Complete disillusionment
4. Renewed interest
5. Common use

You might have noticed that I changed the names from the original model. Why use fancy titles when they can be simple?

Most technologies (if not all) follow this curve. Initially a new idea is introduced. This idea generates much interest and products are made. Companies and people buy the products and the frenzy begins. Expectations of what the technology will achieve are greatly increased. That is, until, some day, someone starts revealing that the technology is not as good as first thought. Doubts enter the minds that once were excited about the technology. The swing goes down. Depending how severe the feedback is, the technology can dip pretty low.

Then something amazing happens. People start dusting off the technology and realize that it really was good for something. They start using it again, but without the hype factor. Slowly but surely the technology is adopted again and this time for good. Eventually the technology enters the mainstream and gets lost amongst all the other accepted technologies. It becomes second nature.

Of course some technologies really are obsoleted and die. It all depends on the strength of the newcomer.

Let’s bring this hype cycle to bear on the virtualization space. It is clear that virtualization is in a very favorable light. In fact, for modern computers, it looks to be ramping up the hype cycle rather nicely. It is fairly safe to assume that there will be a turning point but it is unclear how long that will take. It would probably be safe to assume that it will happen in the next three to five years.

The problem really isn’t with virtualization, but rather the fact that it is being oversold and applied to situations that might not always be better. The analogy for this is that when you have a hammer, the whole world is a nail. Virtualization is actually just one of many different technologies needed to move computer architectures ahead. It is a given that it is important but it certainly is not the only important player.

At some point there is going to be a lot of push back on virtualization. Perhaps it come when the over-hyped solutions get people so angry that there is a big backlash. It is always hard to say when those kind of things are going to happen.

The industry will get hit and something new will take its place. Eventually it will hit bottom and people will once again realize that it is good for something. Virtualization will be recover and be stronger from the journey. Eventually it will become commonplace and transparent. People won’t even know its there but yet it will be incorporated into almost all of the computer systems around them. In a way, it will become like a boring commodity.

People love drama. People love to get rushed into the excitement of hype. Many a good tale has been told about the wonders of the new. It’s part of this path to understand that emotions drive change. The only downfall of too much anticipation is that the demands will never be met. As any consumer in our society and typically they will say that they still want more.

That’s the core of it right there. Hype exists to satisfy our desire for more. Hype shows us the golden way where we will want no more. The problem obviously that hype can never fill our hunger. Promises never match delivered goods. The hunger grows stronger as the technology fails to satisfy.

We start looking for something else. The cycle continues.

It is only when the emotion is gone that the technology really has a chance to survive. The rush is gone but the true benefits remain. The idea was given birth by emotion but survives on its true merit.

It’s hard not to get caught up in the early excitement. It’s hard to ask the hard questions when everyone else just wants it to go forward. Realistically it is the most difficult to buck the trends and realize the value independent of the hype.

I just realized that this is the nature of “Good to Great” companies related to using technology. Perhaps everyone would be better off if the hype didn’t get so out of control.