I’m not in Las Vegas and I wasn’t able to catch the Summit Keynote live stream on the partner channel, honestly, I didn’t see a thing. All I could do was keep a close eye on my Twitter feed, which I did (so no NDA for me). Luckily it worked out pretty well. I’m sure I don’t have all the ins and outs and there are probably a few announcements that I’ve missed, those in Vegas will have some more detailed information I’m sure, but that doesn’t stop me from sharing what I did found out. It’s no secret that Citrix published most of the, if not all, major announcements on their website before, during and after the keynote session, although, it wasn’t all on there… read on.
Let’s start with new partner channel program. As part of their Citrix Partner Growth Plan, the newly introduced Citrix Solution Advisor (CSA) program will primarily focus on Citrix Partner Specializations, and I quote:
Citrix Specializations, the cornerstone of the program, will qualify, brand, recommend and reward partners for demonstrated technical competency, end-to-end sales capability and service delivery to customers. The Specialization program is comprised of tracks that offer partners the opportunity to self-select the technical category that best reflects their current business model and then add other competencies as their business evolves. Each track equips partners to acquire technical expertise and best practices for implementation success with Citrix solutions in the areas of virtualization, mobility management and networking.
If you want to know more about what it takes to become a partner and/or Citrix specialist, I suggest you check out this page, it will tell you all you need to know. And here’s the CTX blog post to go with it as well.
The good stuff…
On to the good stuff, the new Receiver X1 (Receiver for Web included), although not officially announced by Citrix on their website, or anywhere else for that matter, it was mentioned about 25000 times on Twitter during the keynote session. Apparently it made a huge impression. The X1 part stand for experience 1st by the way. It’s now completely HTML5 based, web-enabled, centrally managed and as such very easy to update, or so I’ve been told :) Regarding the Receiver X1 for Web release, it offers you the ability to centrally customize the branding of the web browser experience. This may sound like a small improvement, but it’s a huge plus for many. The tech preview is expected somewhere during Q1 2015.
Also, the new X1 enabled StoreFront server (more to come on this I’m sure) will provide all former Web-Interface functionality plus extras. Finally time to let go of Web-Interface and embrace the new StoreFront architecture. I don’t have any details on the services / functionality that will be provided, but I guess if they say all (and I can confirm that they did) than that’s exactly what I expect to find in a few weeks time. The X1 is also believed to be very intuitive and dynamic, for one, its supposed to have some sort of outage notification bar and it automatically interacts with the user when a service is unavailable, sounds promising. Combine all that with the newly released, or announced, HDX Framehawk technology and we have a real winner on our hands here.
One of my personal favourites
Last but most certainly not least, the X1, and this is something I was actually rooting for last year, will offer one touch access to all our recourses. A single interface across all device platforms by leveraging HTML5 for the UI as well as the client components, MDX and HDX bundled into a single Receiver (at least that’s my interpretation). Finally, no more fooling around with receiver and Worx Home etc. be gone already!
I already briefly mentioned Framehawk. The demo showed on stage was ‘mind-blowing’ at least that’s what Twitter told me. A better than local experience over lossy networks, is what one of the slides showed us. Or, adaptive orchestration dynamically adapts to network conditions, which also sounds very promising. Everyone agrees that this technology is going to be a real game changer with regards to delivering (high end) graphics over high latency, low bandwidth networks. The demo showed content being remotely delivered with up to 50% packet loss, still appearing smoothly. I was a bit surprised by all the ecstatic reaction to be honest since they have been showing the demos for months (YouTube) good fun to read though! The Framehawk technology, together with the X1 Receiver (obviously) will both be available as a tech preview in Q1 2015.
Citrix announced a whole bunch of upcoming tech previews as well as several feature upgrades, Framehawk just being one of them. Other are, Optimization Pack for Lync, Director Session Recording (people have been rooting for this one) and XenServer 6.5, which now includes a 50% increase in server density and a newly designed 64, bit kernel architecture, find out more here. Some of the other announced tech previews include DesktopPlayer for Windows and the XenDesktop Linux Virtual Desktop Agent. A short summary on the above mentioned technologies / products can be found here. The Framehawk technology combined with the X1 release, at least for me, is probably the most impressive / exiting one.
Blog post on the new XenServer release.
Citrix XenMobile is up to version 10 already!
The user, as well as the IT Administrator, experience comes first in the latest Citrix XenMobile release, version 10. Before you continue read this first. Checked out the Dashboard screenshot first did ya? Me to. It looks awesome, the way it should be. If you’ve gone through the accompanying blog post I don’t have to tell you about some of the major enhancements in this upcoming release. But in case you didn’t: both MDM and MAM are now managed from a single console including some additional NetScaler controls (don’t know which). Next to that, I also picked up something about a unified appliance combining both MDM and MAM, saving on infrastructural needs and licenses. Nice! Also read: Ten benefits to channel partners.
With XenMobile 10, Citrix can an offer an end-to-end FIPS compliant solution for EMM with the addition of FIPS compliant connections between the network (NetScaler) and XenMobile Server and between the XenMobile Server and the XenMobile admin console. They’ve also included a new self-service portal, which allows users to locate, lock and wipe a lost or stolen device themselves. Not bad, not bad at all I say.
Here’s another quote for you:
IT can now create one policy and apply it across all platforms and devices, including iOS, Android and Windows Phone. In addition, the integration with NetScaler® gateway extends IT’s view into the network infrastructure from the same unified console, which helps administrators manage automated connectivity checks of multiple systems that are part of the mobility environment. Sounds good right?
I noticed something, in the accompanying blog post, see the ‘read this first’ link above, WorxHome is still in there. If you read the newsflash on XM 10 (see the ‘here’ link below) WorxHome isn’t mentioned. And I think this confirms it, on the official XM slide used during the keynote (publically available on Twitter) WorxHome is nowhere to be found as well. So I think it’s safe to assume that the Receiver X1 will indeed include the WorxHome functionality once it’s released.
More information on the latest XM release can be found here. All in all most were / are pretty excited about the new features added and changes made to XenMobile 10.
“The physical workspace will be software-defined in the future.” Citrix CEO Mark Templeton #CitrixSummit
A word on physicalisation
Citrix WorkspacePod! Another shocker, at least according to Citrix and HP. You can read the newsflash here. I’ve done some digging (as far as they let me) and although I applaud their attempt to innovate, I’m not complete sure if they actually did, no offense. I mean, a converged infrastructure is nothing new nowadays, every vendor has one. Hyper-convergence is a logical next step, sure, and a bit more special as well. But ultra-convergence? What is up with that? I know, it’s because of the added GPU, but still.
WorkspacePod is primarily based on HP Moonshot coupled with HP’s SL4540 storage server hosting the so-called Citrix core services. All this gets topped of with the newly acquired Sanbolic software defined storage software (on the three SL4540 nodes). The first two we know already, the Sanbolic addition however (the WARP Drive) is new. Going through the reference architecture document it doesn’t tell me much on how this works under the sheets but it’s closer to hyper-convergence than anything else. I must admit, I like how it looks on paper.
I’ve been investigating the Moonshot portfolio during the last couple of weeks, the m700 HDI orientated cartridges to be a bit more precise, and I can’t say I was really impressed. Not that I don’t like the technology, because I do. I mean with all the hardware being physical and on a one to one basis including an integrated GPU, what’s not to like. I just thought its use case was fairly limited (an overkill in most cases) that it lacked certain flexibility, ease of manageability and initial setup. It being all physical. Besides, for me, being able to make use of a GPU, to name one, doesn’t necessarily mean that I should. Now that they’ve come up with this (added Sanbolic to the equation) it does sound more appealing than before.
Ouch
Man, I had a whole 7000+ words article almost ready to go, comparing (nut judging or bashing) Moonshot to hyper-converged infrastructures, read: Nutanix, and they go and do something like this. I’ll just keep it to myself a bit longer :) Need more information first.
They also did a good job on upgrading the GPU with the Xeon E3 Iris Pro chipset and the rest of the numbers shown also sounded impressive (nothing really new though). Being able to make use of MCS is another plus. But what else has changed with Moonshot? Anything new with regards to initial install and (network) setup, any new wizards perhaps, what about overall maintenance and firmware upgrades, still the same? Still ‘just’ WDS support? Or are SCCM, RES etc. in the picture as well? Nevertheless, a solid step forward. I also hear that the WorkspacePod will be manageable from Citrix’s Workspace Cloud solution going forward. More on this in a minute.
I just mentioned them; check out the new XenDesktop plugin for Nutanix, more information here
The fun continues…
There was a second keynote (techtalk) session yesterday (Jan the 14th 2015). Citrix explicitly asked the audience not to tweet any NDA information, multiple times. And so they did, it was fairly quite on Twitter. But it was obvious that there was again excitement among the audience, here’s what I found, again primarily based on my Twitter feed.
They introduced a new CloudBridge appliance, I picked up a few lines: VP Klaus Oesterman announces CloudBridge for WAN Virtualization to lower MPLS costs and optimize app performance. CloudBridge optimizes Lan to cloud traffic, taking latency out of the equation and some great new features, Virtual WAN, MPLS, Internet and 4G networks. All bonded! It’s not much, but it will have to do for now.
ShareFile got mentioned as well; they introduced a new feature called Restricted Storage Zones. An interesting addition. Check out the CTX blog on the matter, go here.
There was some talk on the Internet of Things (IoT). Apparently Citrix bought a company named OctoBlu, which specializes in the integration of everything. You can sign up for a beta trial of the software (app). Although, when I tried I received an internal server error. It supposable holds great potential according to some of the attendants.
Minds were blown
Without a doubt the biggest ‘upset’ of the session was around the Citrix Workspace Cloud, formerly known as Citrix Workspace Services, minds were blown, or something to that extend. Apparently it will revolutionize the workspace delivery in 2015. Two blog posts were released on the subject, this one and this one. And because a picture says more than a thousand words.
Although I didn’t see any of this in action, they showed several demos during the keynote session, I agree that this could indeed be some sort of turning point with regards to how we design, deploy and manage our future infrastructures. Can’t wait to hear more about this. This is the Citrix.com product page. A single point of access to design, deliver and manage the complete Citrix technology stack. Workspace Cloud will deliver this revolutionary platform for workspace and infrastructure services management. I like it.
vs. Goliath
Not sure if this one is discussed at Summit as well but I’d like to bring it under your attention anyway. I haven’t tried it (yet) but it sounds like they are on to something good here. Check Goliaths (Citrix Ready) Logon Simulator. It will show you when there is a problem, where there is a problem and how to fix it. I say, since were busy buying companies anyway, buy Goliath as well and build the logon simulator functionality into Director straight away. Would make an excellent addition!
That’s it for now, I’m sure we will find out more in the next few weeks about some of the new or enhanced technologies mentioned, interesting times ahead for sure. Thanks for reading.
6 responses to “What happens in Vegas… Goes on basvankaam.com Citrix Summit 2015 exposed!”
Nice article Bas..
Thank you Igor!
Thanks for sharing.
Sure thing.
Great summary, thanks :)
Thanks for the update Bas!