During the last year or so I had couple of interesting discussions (trough CUGC, Twitter, real life etc.) on what Citrix might need to do from a business and application development perspective. Perhaps sell some of their products, reinvent, recode or reinvest in existing technology, innovate (which they’re doing) perhaps buy another company and so on and so forth. Of course it’s always easy to judge or come up with comments like these being a so-called sideline critic, but it’s not my intention to be the ‘wise guy’ here, I’m just thinking out loud, that is all.
AppDisks application layering
At first I felt that they were taking to long. Presented months ago and still no TP has been officially announced today. Which would be ok if some additional roadmap information was available, but that’s very hard to find, if any at all. It’s no secret that the core around AppDisks is based on the existing PvD technology (and will also include AppDNA of course), that’s why I thought they would be able to come up with something useful rather quickly. And since other vendors are filling up this space fast, I wouldn’t want Citrix to miss out, app layering and related technologies are hot this time around.
However, I’m no coder or programmer so I realize there might more to it then meets the eye. And as Mr. Andrew Morgan (again, thank you for that Andrew) just recently explained to me this is tricky technology they have to deal with. So I apologize for being this impatient. Hopefully a Tech Preview of some sort will be released soon.
As David Wagner, product manager of Citrix AppDisks, mentioned during one the Ask Eric podcast shows, the initial release will only be capable of assigning AppDisks based on Delivery Groups, meaning machines only. And since AppDisks is based on PvD, it will only work for virtual machines, something to be aware of as well. It goes without saying that, in future releases, this will have to change to virtual as well as physical machines, including user and user group assignments, and it will I’m sure.
Concierge is a ‘nice to have’ at this point
While I really like the idea behind Concierge, it could be so much more and not limited to XenMobile like it is today. It isn’t new. Concierge, or similar functionality anyway (it had another name back then, can’t recall) has been around for almost two years now, or at least a year and a half. It was (sort of) build into XenMobile version 8.6 / 9 as well in the form of GoToAssist. Yes it looks better, more functionality is build in and the backend has also been handled nicely and so on, but it’s still a separate application that we need to install, or wrap even, and it’s for mobile iOS and Android exclusively.
As a side-note, not that long ago I also commented on one of the CUGC discussion regarding Concierge, shortly after that Citrix contacted me telling me how they appreciate all the feedback the community is giving on the forums etc. and asked me if I would be interested in reviewing and further testing later this year when they will continue to work on Concierge. Which I think is just great, kudos to Citrix for that.
Some additional thoughts on this
I think it would really shine if they could make something like this part of the X1 Receiver. Sort of what they did with Receiver and Worx Home, combining both. Wouldn’t it be great if we could also use it for Windows applications and desktops published through XenApp and/or XenDesktop for example? Remotely support Desktops, laptops, mobile devices, Mac’s even, and why stop there?
Concierge also has a build-in helpdesk ticketing system. Think of what they could do if it would also work for XenApp / XenDesktop. Why not come up with a full-blown helpdesk support ticketing system as well, adding in extra value and keeping it within their own portfolio. Integration is key here, so make it part of Director / Studio. But maybe I’m reaching. Again, this isn’t meant as a bad evaluation or anything, just a thought. .
And while we are on the subject, what about building on top of XenMobile, adding in additional management and support functionalities, further expanding its capabilities? X1 is already upon us, so why not enable it to manage Windows 10 devices (laptops, desktops, tablets etc.) as well? Look at what VMware is doing with Project A2 / AirWatch. Windows isn’t the one holding us (yeah, Citrix sort of feels mine as well) back. Would be awesome. And once they have AppDisks up and running, throw those in there as well, even better!
Support tools need to be integrated further
Citrix has some really amazing support tools out there, free for everybody to use. Take Insight Services (TaaS.Citrix.com) for example, an excellent resource for scanning and troubleshooting your XenApp / XenDesktop infrastructure, including a whole bunch of related (Citrix) technologies and products.
As you might be aware, Insight Services tightly integrates with Citrix Scout (which is installed as part of XenApp / XenDesktop). The so-called Collect and Upload feature (which is often used at the request of Citrix Support) within Scout has the ability to auto upload its findings (referred to as key data points) to Insight Services, or TaaS from now on, where it will be scanned for vulnerabilities and such.
Today the above only works for XenApp and XenDesktop. If you want to do the same for NetScaler, PVS, XenMobile etc, you will have to download and run separate scripts and manually upload the collected data to TaaS. There must be an easier way right? For one, support for Scout (and TaaS) could be build into the management consoles of other products as well, again, making them integrate. But let’s take it one step further, though I realize this might be easier said than done.
Enter Citrix Director
What about Director? A lot of companies use Director as a first line of defense to help overcome and resolve some of the most common issues today, which is great because that’s what it is meant to do. For example, shadowing users is also done from Director. If they could find a way to integrate Scout, and thus TaaS, into Director we would again be one step closer to further simplifying managing and troubleshooting the FMA when needed.
I mean, Director already monitors all of the major FMA components (services), and when using CDF tracing for example, remote CDF Traces are optional as well (which is basically what scout does, in fact CDF tracing is build into Scout) and the same goes for the Scout collect and upload feature. Even if it were just for XenApp and XenDesktop I feel this would be a major step forward.
Next, if the collect and upload scripts for other Citrix products besides XenApp and XenDesktop could be build into Scout as well, including the auto upload to TaaS feature, well… Can you see the big picture? Director, including Concierge, Scout and perhaps a separate tab or section for XenMobile in there somewhere?
Citrix updates
The above mentioned TaaS tooling also helps in pro-actively scanning your environment in search for potential issues, including patches and updates that might be missing. While it does a decent job, it’s not what most of us are looking for, it isn’t granular enough.
Now I’m not saying that Microsoft has it al figured out when it comes to patching, but I would like to see something similar for Citrix as well. They could start by asking the community. Just recently there was an update tool released specifically aimed at Citrix updates. Build this functionality into TaaS / Director and/or make it available as a separate download, and off we go.
Monitoring, more = more
Director offers some monitoring capabilities but not enough to fully depend on. Almost every company I visit or consultant I talk to uses an additional third party product to get more detailed insights into their XenApp and/or XenDesktop landscape. Though I haven’t worked with Citrix EdgeSight myself almost everybody who has in the past, or still does, is very positive about it. We should see something similar being brought back into Director as well. Or at least something owned and/or developed by Citrix, controlling the stack from top to bottom.
All this, not just the monitoring though, might also help in bringing additional value to some of the more expensive licenses around XenApp, XenDesktop, XenMobile etc.
Documentation and such
As it stands today, TaaS, or Insight Services (take your pick), does a great job; though it would be great if Citrix gave it a bit more attention and promote its features. How about a webinar combined with a Citrix blog? Explaining how it works, what the benefits are, what you need to know and do, what happens under the covers and so on and so forth.
I think this might be helpful and potentially make the whole Citrix Support experience a bit smoother as well. The same goes for Scout by the way. There is some documentation available, but it’s not enough. I’ve been at various customer sites that had to deal with CTX support and Scout and they were having a hard time understanding what it was they needed to do, or to get Scout functioning properly to start with.
Workspace Cloud
Ok, this is a great piece of engineering and innovation, everybody agrees on that. One thing is missing though, an on-premises control plane (VMware is working on one for Enzo). I realize that it is still early days for Workspace Cloud and that I’m not the only one coming up with comments like these, but I still wanted to include it. Most companies (probably somewhere around 80 / 85%) will be ok with how Workspace Cloud operates today because they can have total control over their data, which is very important nowadays. However, there will still be some companies like governments, financial or medical orientated businesses for example that want to be able to control everything. These types of companies, most of them anyway, are huge. And this goes for ShareFile as well, since that’s what the Workspace Control plane is based, or runs, on.
The Universal Print Server
Why isn’t Windows Server 2012 officially supported yet (it still isn’t right?), 2016 is around the corner. There, that’s it. There have been lots of requests for this.
Also, in one of the latest Citrix Blogs around the UPS, it tells us that it does not provide the compression (between the CTX and Print server) that it is supposed to give us in theory. It is mentioned in the same article that it was only tested on a small-scale environment so test result may vary, but still. Telling us that a product is enterprise ready, that it offers compression and such, that it is ideal for remote branch office printing where the print server is located close to the users and physical printers, and then showing us in one of your own articles that it doesn’t work in the real-world?
Could you guys please test this on a larger scale? I know it also provides ways to implement proximity printing for example, but compression is supposed to be one of its main features / selling points (although it’s free of course). I think this approach isn’t helping Citrix.
The WorkspacePod(s)
There were some big plans around this (not going into any more details, I’ve had my share of discussion on this one :) during Summit this year, but it wasn’t mentioned once at Synergy, at least not in any of the bigger sessions. There were some blog posts released around some of the hardware vendors that have been added to their portfolio, but that’s about it. What happened? I would like to know more. The Melio software however, closely related to the WorkspacePod has found some nice use cases (NetScaler fro example) on its own within the CTX portfolio.
The Elliot affair
I gave this some (more) thought. While I sort of agreed at some point (not with getting rid of NetScaler by the way), I think it’s really all about prioritizing. It doesn’t really matter if they sell off the GoTo suite for example, develop another mouse or make even more lights flash (Octoblu will become very important in the future, I know), it’s about focus and giving each product the attention it needs and deserves, when the time is right. However, if they do decide to sell some of their products, than I’m sure they thought this through carefully and it’s probably the best thing to do. I’m positive all will be fine going forward.
The Keynote
The 2015 Synergy Keynote has already been discusses extensively so I won’t highlight the failed demos and such, could happen to anyone. What surprised me most was the actual content of both keynotes. It was all professionally presented, the slides looked great as always and although Mark needed some time to warm up, it was all fine as far as I’m concerned. However, the day 1 Keynote didn’t really told or showed us anything new.
The biggest news basically was the extended support for XenApp 6.5, which was also referred to as We Love XenApp. All the other stuff, or most anyway, had already been introduced and shown at Summit a few months prior to Synergy, including some huge follow ups shortly after in the form of webinars and some detailed Citrix blogs.
Of course there were still some interesting and nice enhancements, tech preview releases and so on, but no real exiting new (or big) announcements. The day 2 Keynote however was the exact opposite and full of announcements, new products and cool demoes. My point being, I think it should have been the other way around, for the most part anyway. Anyway, hopefully I will be able to visit Synergy in Vegas next year. I really had a great time, met a lot of new people, and of course the event itself was an awesome experience as well!
Wrap up
Again, these are just some thoughts I thought I’d share. Again, I’m fully aware that a lot of what I’m suggestion today might take a ton of work with regards coding / programming. But who knows what Citrix is already working on behind the scenes (lot’s I’m sure) they are, or should be, more than capable to keep innovating, integrating and come up with plenty of new useful products and features, as they have done in the past and are doing today.
Hopefully some of the changes that the company is currently undergoing will eventually all turn out for the best. For the company, its employees, their customers and portfolio and of course for Mark T in particular.
