Archive
#Citrix #XenMobile 10 news – #MDM, #MAM, #EMM, #Mobility, #BYOD
Citrix have released a couple of good blog posts on the new version of XenMobile 10:
Ten Benefits XenMobile 10 Offers To Channel Partners
XenMobile 10 marks the simplification milestone in our Enterprise Mobility Management journey. Today, at Summit Las Vegas we are happy to announce the release of XenMobile 10. XenMobile brings great benefits for both end users and IT administrators.
And here are ten benefits I can think of, from the top of my head that XenMobile 10 brings to our Citrix channel partners:
- Better for Business:
With the 20+ enterprise workflow efficiencies and design improvements that enable business users’ productivity on smartphones and tablets, XenMobile is focused on empowering mobile users. With Citrix’s dedicated focus on user experience, the Worx apps and the Worx Gallery apps are designed to enable enterprise user workflows.
- Enterprise-grade Product: XenMobile architecture is built for complex and sophisticated network topologies that exist in a typical large enterprise with its offices and users across the world.
- Consolidated Architecture: XenMobile 10 integrates the mobile device and application management consoles along with some NetScaler Gateway controls, into one product. This consolidated architecture in this release makes it easy to use and deploy thereby ensuring our channel partners remain successful in their service engagements.
- Intuitive Dashboard:XenMobile 10 brings a fresh look with the redesign of the administrative dashboard. Channel partners can now manage and deploy XenMobile with a complete understanding of the deployments.
- Faster Deployment: With the consolidated architecture for mobile device and application management along with the additional controls for NetScaler Gateway, the deployment time with XenMobile 10 is reduced by 75%!
- Mobile User Workflows: True Mobility is about enabling the user not with a bunch of applications, but with the applications that let the user get their job done without exhaustingly navigating through multiple apps. XenMobile has always focused on enabling user workflows; XenMobile 10 now delivers additional enhancements to allow the end users remain productive without having to be tethered a specific device or a location.
- Automation: We recently announced the automation of APNS Certificate Signing process with which partners can now renew the APNS certificates for their customers. The concept of automation is now extended to ISV partners’ self-verification of their wrapped applications and a self-service portal for end users that allows them to location, track and wipe their lost/stolen device themselves.
- Faster Migration: With the migration tools that will be released for XenMobile 10, channel partners can easily migrate the existing XenMobile customers.
- Security and best-in-class User Experience: Traditionally, security and user experience of products never coexisted. However, XenMobile is proud to bear an exception for this norm by delivering an end user experience that is Better For Business without compromising security. XenMobile offers end-to-end FIPS compliant solution for mobility.
- Specialization Benefits:…
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing – #ShareFile, #Citrix, #EMC, #Box, #Microsoft
It’s not new but it’s something that I discussed the other day with a customer; who is the market leader when it comes to “corporate dropbox” solutions for enterprises? Gartner did update the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing services/solutions and it’s a good read I must say.
You know I am a Citrix fan and a like their story and think that they from an overall virtual workplace offerings are far superior to the other players if you look across the stack from providing “legacy” services like Windows Apps and Desktop, Enterprise Mobility Management capabilities and all the network capabilities to provide the end-to-end service delivery. So it’s really nice to see that they are picking up in the ability to execute and are competing with EMC in the Leaders box!
I just hope that Citrix can stay int he lead and ensure that they price and capacity wise stay in synch with the up comers that are starting to offer really large storage capacity as a part of their cloud offerings. I still see that the capabilities and features of ShareFile are really great, and in some aspects others like Box, Microsoft and others are coming with nice features as well. So let’s see who will rule this market, but currently I think that ShareFile is a really strong player for enterprises but Microsoft will continue to grow and I just wish they add the additional features around security etc that enterprises often require so they can go into the bigger companies as well.
Source: Gartner (July 2014)
Market Definition/Description
This document was revised on 14 July 2014. The document you are viewing is the corrected version. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.
EFSS refers to a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enable individuals to synchronize and share documents, photos, videos and files across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. File sharing can be within the organization, as well as externally (e.g., with partners and customers) or on a mobile device as data sharing among apps. Security and collaboration support are critical capabilities of EFSS to address enterprise priorities.
Beyond file synchronization, sharing and access, EFSS offerings may include different levels of support for:
- Mobility, with native apps for a variety of mobile smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktops, as well as Web browser support.
- Security, for protection of data on the device, in transit and in cloud services (or servers), such as password protection, remote wipe, data encryption, data loss prevention, digital rights management (DRM), access tracking and reporting. Mature products ensure that files leaving the sharing location are DRM-encrypted and only readable by those authorized to access the data. Audit and compliance support are also present in complete products.
- Administration and management, including integration with an Active Directory and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) policy enforcement.
- Back-end server integration, e.g., with SharePoint and other corporate platforms. Integration is achieved through connectors (e.g., based on the Content Management Interoperability Services [CMIS] standard and APIs).
- Content manipulation, such as file editing, PDF annotations and note taking.
- Collaboration, such as cooperative editing on a shared document using change tracking and comments; and document-based workflow process support.
- Simplicity and usability, with optimized UIs and interactions, such as file drag and drop and file open in applications.
- Storage, i.e., cloud-based EFSS services often include cloud storage as part of the bundle to implement the EFSS repository. Software EFSS products, instead, may integrate with repositories on-premises or be implemented with a separate repository on-site.
Typical architectures for EFSS offerings are:
- Cloud: Corporate files are accessed via mobile devices, or shared and are stored in the provider’s cloud. Organizations that want to replace the personal cloud services adopted by employees with an enterprise-class alternative under IT control, while preserving the user experience and enhancing mobile collaboration, prefer the cloud method.
- On-premises: The remote access, synchronization and sharing component is deployed on-premises and integrates with corporate data repositories, without file replicas. This method is preferred by organizations under strict regulations about data storage.
- Hybrid: The user and device authentication, security and search mechanisms are implemented in the provider’s cloud. Files and documents are kept in their original location, or can be in third-party clouds. Organizations that want to simplify mobile users’ access to corporate data through the cloud, without creating data replicas in someone else’s cloud, prefer the hybrid method.
There are two types of EFSS offerings:
- Destinations — Stand-alone products with file sync and share as a core capability, which represents a new purchase for an organization.
- Extensions — File sync and share capabilities added, and wrapped around established products or applications — e.g., for collaboration, content management or storage. Organizations can use extensions as part of the broader platform (see “Destinations and Wraparounds Will Reshape the Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing Market”).
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Nutanix Announces Global Agreement with #Dell
Wow! This is interesting! 😀
Strategic Relationship Significantly Expands Access and Distribution of Nutanix Solutions with Dell’s World-Class Hardware, Services and Marketing to Accelerate Adoption of Web-scale Converged Infrastructure in the Enterprise
SAN JOSE, CALIF. – June 24, 2014 – Nutanix, the leading provider of next-generation datacenter infrastructure solutions, today announced it has signed an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with Dell to offer a new family of converged infrastructure appliances based on Nutanix web-scale technology. The combination of Nutanix’s groundbreaking software running on Dell’s industry-leading servers delivers a flexible, scale-out platform that brings IT simplicity to modern datacenters. The Nutanix and Dell collaboration is designed from the ground up to deliver innovative web-scale technology to enterprises of any size. The agreement also includes joint sales, marketing, support and service investments, as well as alignment of product roadmaps.
The new Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances will be built with Nutanix software running on Dell PowerEdge servers, and will be available in multiple variants to meet a wide range of price and performance options. The appliances will deliver high-performance converged infrastructure ideal for powering a broad spectrum of popular enterprise use cases, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), virtualized business applications, multi-hypervisor environments and more. Nutanix’s web-scale software runs on all popular virtualization hypervisors, including VMware vSphere™, Microsoft Hyper-V™ and open source KVM, and is uniquely able to span multiple hypervisors in the same environment. The Dell XC Series appliances are scheduled for availability in the fourth quarter of this year and will be sold by Dell sales teams and channel partners worldwide.
“Nutanix is a recognized leader in the converged infrastructure market with a software-driven offering that fits with Dell’s efforts to redefine datacenter economics and simplify IT for our customers,” said Alan Atkinson, vice president and general manager, Dell Storage. “By combining market-leading infrastructure and software technologies from both companies with Dell’s world-class go-to-market capabilities, we believe our new solutions will be positioned to be a significant player in the growing, multi-billion dollar converged infrastructure market.”
“Dell is a world-class leader in servers, storage and networking, and has established itself as a valuable IT partner for many of the world’s largest organizations,” said Dheeraj Pandey, co-founder and CEO, Nutanix. “Nutanix is teaming with Dell to accelerate our global sales growth through Dell’s vast direct and channel sales networks. In Dell, we chose a company that shares our vision of disrupting traditional datacenter infrastructures with intelligent software running on x86 hardware to power all datacenter services.” Read more…
Almost perfect.. #ShareFile StorageZones on Azure is now generally available! – #Citrix, #Azure
This is a great addition I must say, but some things are missing!
One thing that I’m missing is the full integration with Azure storage containers! You still have to specify a temp/cache storage location that today ShareFile controller requires to be on a CIFS share when you have multiple controllers. And if you put the controller up in Azure as well, how do you then get that CIFS share and make it highly available? There is no CIFS exposure directly from the Azure storage, you have to setup a couple of VM’s in Azure, do something like DFS to expose is.. and then all of a sudden you have a whole file service to manage there as well.. and to monitor and all of a sudden you need AD and monitoring and reporting of it.. phuuu…
So I hope that in next version we can specify an Azure storage container for that cache/temp storage as well! 😉
The other thing I’d really like to see is NetScaler support in Azure, so that we could do proper AAA/CS/LB of the controllers in Azure as well so that we can get a simple and fully cloud based service in Azure! 🙂
BYOD and a growing global workforce are generating demand for instant access to data, offline productivity and seamless collaboration from anywhere. Organizations are challenged with reconciling these forces with leveraging existing investments, protect intellectual property and meet regulatory compliance requirements – driving interest in ShareFile StorageZones. StorageZones offers IT the flexibility to store data in secure Citrix-managed datacenters in multiple worldwide locations, or on-premise within their own datacenters.
At Citrix Synergy 2013, we announced new ShareFile StorageZones options with Microsoft Windows Azure. We are now pleased to announce the general availability of ShareFile StorageZones on Azure with the release of ShareFile StorageZones Controller software version 2.2. This release includes support for Windows Azure storage containers, therefore if you have a Windows Azure account, you can use an Azure storage container for your private data storage instead of a locally maintained share. Hosting ShareFile data natively in your Microsoft Azure account helps IT build the most cost-effective and customized solution for their organization. This customer-managed solution integrates ShareFile with Microsoft Azure’s Binary Large Object (Blob) storage, a cloud service for storing large amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS.
Product Overview
Azure storage is customer-managed storage hosted in the Windows Azure cloud. File uploads are initially deposited into a temporary storage area shared by all StorageZone controllers. Then, a background service copies those files to the Windows Azure storage container and deletes the local cached copy of the file(s).
Typically with CIFS based StorageZones, the Controller servers are installed on-premise in the customer’s datacenter. However, if a customer is hosting virtual machines in Azure, they could install the StorageZone Controller software on instances running in their Azure account and not necessarily on-premise.
Read the ShareFile StorageZones on Azure Storage Technical Brief and watch the video Installing and Configuring ShareFile StorageZones v2.2 with Microsoft Azure to learn more about this solution.
Check out our Citrix and…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#XenMobile Mobility promotion from #Citrix – #EMM, #BYOD, #XenDesktop
XenMobile mobile device management (MDM) or enterprise mobile management (EMM) capabilities for the price of Software Maintenance!
Personally I wonder if this is a move triggered by VMware’s acquisition of AirWatch where Citrix now is kind of pushing it’s MDM solution out the door to really get some more market, and at the same time push VMware to give their new MDM capabilities away together with Horizon View…
This is an interesting and good action, thank you Citrix!
XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion
Promotion effective From January 31, 2014 to September 30, 2014
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The XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion is a limited-time promotion that offers new or existing XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum customers with perpetual licenses current on Subscription Advantage (SA) the ability to receive FREE XenMobile MDM edition licenses or get 20% off XenMobile Enterprise licenses with the purchase of first year Software Maintenance for all licenses obtained via this promotion. For either XenMobile promotion options, the maximum number of discounted licenses customers can purchase is based on the total number of XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum licenses owned. XenMobile MDM edition provides key device-level security capabilities for users accessing XenApp and XenDesktop desktops and apps on mobile devices. The mobile device management (MDM) solution lets you:
XenMobile Enterprise edition supports the next step in your EMM strategy by complementing the device-level security capabilities of XenMobile MDM edition with app-level security features. These include:
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Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Nutanix Triumphs at V3 Technology Awards 2013 for Best Virtualisation Product – #IaaS
This is great! A great product takes another award!!! 😉
V3 Readers Award Nutanix with Prestigious Industry Recognition in Highly Competitive Category
Nutanix also won the Best of VMworld 2013 Gold Award for Private Cloud Computing!
LONDON, December 3, 2013 – Nutanix, the leading provider of hyper-efficient, massively scalable and elegantly simple datacentre infrastructure solutions, has been awarded for its continuing innovation in optimising datacentre infrastructure at the V3 Technology Awards 2013. During a ceremony at the Waldorf Hilton Hotel, the company was awarded Best Virtualisation product, beating a host of well respected and larger, more established organisations in the virtualisation market.
V3.co.uk is a leading source of news and analysis for technology professionals, written by a team of expert IT journalists in the UK and Silicon Valley. The awards were hotly contested this year, with more than 450 entries from 150 companies.
“It’s great to see a new company like Nutanix being recognised at the V3 Technology Awards, among the industry giants. It wasn’t an easy task whittling down the hundreds of entries to create the shortlist, and then V3 readers voted in their thousands for their favourites, making this a significant achievement and a well-deserved win. Well done Nutanix!” said Madeline Bennett, Editor, V3 and The INQUIRER.
Alan Campbell, Regional Director of Western Europe at Nutanix, commented on the success: “Nutanix is a company that is constantly innovating and striving to provide the best platform for its customers, so this recognition by a highly respected publication is a testament to the hard work of our team. Virtualisation is a rapidly evolving technology which we are proud to be at the forefront of and to receive an award in the UK, a key market for us, is an honour.
As the fastest growing enterprise…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Gartner analyst slams #OpenStack, again – #IaaS
Good article and I must agree that OpenStack has quite a long way to go before the “average” enterprise embraces it…
OpenStack still has maturing to do before it’s really ready for the enterprise, analyst says
Network World – Gartner analyst Allessandro Perilli recently attended his first summit for the open source cloud platform OpenStack and he says the project has a long way to go before it’s truly an enterprise-grade platform.
In a blog post reviewing his experience, the analyst – who focuses on studying cloud management tools – says that OpenStack is struggling to increase its enterprise adoption. Despite marketing efforts by vendors and favorable press, enterprise adoption remains in the very earliest stages, he says.
Don’t believe the hype generated by press and vendor marketing: OpenStack penetration in the large enterprise market is minimal.— Gartner analyst Alessandro Perilli
Sure there are examples like PayPal, eBay and Yahoo using OpenStack. But these are not the meat and potatoes types of enterprise customers that vendors are looking to serve. Why? He outlines four reasons, most of which are related to the process and community nature of the project, and less around the technical maturity of it. By the way, this is not the first time a Gartner analyst has thrown cold water on the project.
[EARLIER CRITICISMS FROM GARTNER: Gartner report throws cold water on OpenStack hype]
Lack of clarity about what OpenStack does
There is market confusion about exactly what OpenStack is, he says. It is an open source platform that can be assembled together to build a cloud. It, by itself, is not a cloud though just by downloading and installing it. OpenStack requires some heavy lifting to turn the code into an executable cloud platform, which is why dozens of companies have come out with distributions or productized versions of OpenStack code. But, the code itself is not a competitor to cloud platforms offered by vendors like VMware, BMC, CA or others. Read more…
New #Nutanix Platforms for Graphics, Performance and Economical Storage – #IaaS, #XenDesktop, #BYOD, #NVIDIA
This is really cool!!! Great job as usual Nutanix!!
and Economical Storage
Enterprises continue to embrace converged scale-out architectures to make their datacenters simpler and easier to manage. Nutanix—the leader in converged infrastructure—brings these benefits to all parts of enterprise IT, providing the flexibility and power to run any virtual workload within a single infrastructure. Nutanix has added several new products to its family of Virtual Computing Platforms:
NX-7000 series platform for
powering graphics intensive users
Virtual desktop computing has become mainstream in all size organizations, and throughout all industries. Despite its successful and pervasive enterprise deployment, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has been unable to deliver many graphics-intensive applications and services with the same level of performance as when running on physical workstations.
To address this need, Nutanix has partnered with NVIDIA and Teradici to broaden its VDI portfolio, and integrate cutting edge acceleration for graphics rich desktops. The NX-7110 supports configurations with both NVIDIA GRID K1
and K2 GPU technology, as well as Teradici PCoIP APEX cards. The Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform is the industry’s first converged infrastructure to support every type of VDI user, from task and knowledge workers to power and data scientists. Leveraging VMware’s SVGA driver technology along with NVIDIA GRID, the NX-7000 supports multiple rendering models, including Soft 3D, vSGA and vDGA.
Existing Nutanix environments can dynamically deploy NX-7110 appliances into a unified cluster that is centrally managed, while maintaining graphics intensive users in a separate desktop pool. Additional benefits include the delivery of maximum compatibility and portability to any user. For the first time, organizations have the confidence to move away from more expensive and rigid physical workstations, and virtualize their entire portfolio of desktops. The NX-7110 is now generally available.
NX-6020 delivers more economical
data storage
The NX-6020 supports VMs with very large datasets, such as SQL databases, big data
analytics projects and VDI deployments with full clones. It provides a 25% increase in available capacity. With both in-line and post-pr
ocess compression, it delivers between 42TB and 68TB of effective capacity in a space-efficient 2U platform. In addition, Nutanix has focused on cost-reducing other components within the appliance delivering a more economical data storage solution.
NX-3000/6000 series gets more powerful CPUs for 30% faster performance
Nutanix has updated the existing NX-3000 and NX-6000 product families with four new platforms featuring Intel’s Ivy Bridge server CPUs. As a 100% software-defined solution, Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform can rapidly adopt new technologies.
These new appliances benefit from 25% more CPU cores, faster clock speeds and a reduced power profile. This translates to a 30% increase in performance for VMs running on Nutanix, as well as support for higher VM densities. Each of these new platforms can be seamlessly added to any existing Nutanix cluster to immediately take advantage of the most advanced CPU technologies.
Read more here!
//Richard
#XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template Tech Preview for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager – #SCVMM
This is interesting! Really good and can’t wait to try it out!
Introduction
Let’s face it, installing distributed, enterprise-class virtual desktop and server based computing infrastructure is time consuming and complex. The infrastructure consists of many components that are installed on individual servers and then configured to work together. Traditionally this has largely been a manual, error prone process.
The Citrix XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) leverages the rich automation capabilities available in Microsoft’s private cloud offering to significantly streamline and simplify the installation experience. The XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template enables rapid deployment of virtual app and desktop infrastructure on Microsoft System Center 2012 private clouds. This Tech Preview is available now and includes the latest 7.1 version of XenDesktop that supports Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager.
Key Benefits:
- Rapid Deployment – A fully configured XenDesktop 7.1 deployment that adheres to Citrix best practices is automatically installed in about an hour; a manual installation can take a day or more.
- Reduction of human errors and the unwanted consequences – IT administrators answer 9 questions about the XenDesktop deployment, including the VM Network to use, the domain to join, the SQL server used to host the database, the SCVMM server to host the desktops, and the administrative service accounts to connect to each of these resources. Once this information is entered, the Service Template automation installs the XenDesktop infrastructure the same way, every time, ensuring consistency and correctness.
- Reduction in cost of IT Operations – XenDesktop infrastructure consistently configured with automation is less costly to support because the configuration adheres to best practice standards.
- Free highly skilled and knowledgeable staff from repeatable and mundane tasks – A Citrix administrator’s time is better spent focused on ensuring that users get access to the applications they need, rather than lengthy production installation tasks.
- Simplified Eval to Retail Conversion – Windows Server 2012 and later, as well as XenDesktop 7.1, support conversion of evaluation product keys to retail keys. This means that a successful POC deployment of the XenDesktop 7.1 Service Template is easily converted to a fully supported and properly configured production deployment.
- Easy Scale-Out for greater capacity – SCVMM Service Templates support a scale-out model to increase user capacity. For example, as user demand increases additional XenDesktop Controllers and StoreFront servers are easily added with a few clicks and are automatically joined to the XenDesktop site.
The XenDesktop Service Templates were developed and tested with the support of our friends and partners at Dell, who, in support of the release of XenDesktop 7.1 and the Service Template technical preview, are expected to launch new and innovative solutions that include these and other automation capabilities this quarter. These solutions are based on the Dell DVS Enterprise for Citrix XenDesktop solutions.
Simplification of Distributed Deployments
The XenDesktop 7.1 in-box installation wizard is a fantastic user experience that automatically installs all the required prerequisites and XenDesktop components in under 30 minutes. The result is a fully installed XenDesktop deployment, all on a single server, that is excellent for POCs and product evaluations. The installation and configuration challenges occur when you want to install XenDesktop in production, with enterprise-class scalability, distributed across multiple servers.
Manual Installation Steps
Making #OpenStack Grizzly Deployments Less Hairy – #Puppet, #PuppetLabs
Today, I’m excited to announce a new module from Puppet Labs for OpenStack Grizzly. I’ve been working on this module with the goal of demonstrating how to simplify OpenStack deployments by identifying their independent components and customizing them for your environment.
The puppetlabs-grizzly module is a multi-node deployment of OpenStack built on the puppetlabs-openstack modules. There are two core differences in how it handles deploying OpenStack resources. First, it uses a “roles and profiles” model. Roles allow you to identify a node’s function, and profiles are the components that describe that role. For example, a typical controller node is composed of messaging, database and API profiles. Roles and profiles allow you to clearly define what a node does with a role, while being flexible enough to mix profiles to compose new roles.
The second difference is that the module leverages Hiera, a database that allows you to store configuration settings in a hierarchy of text files. Hiera can use Facter facts about a given node to set values for module parameters, rather than storing those values in the module itself. If you have to change a network setting or password, Hiera allows you to change it in your Hiera text file hierarchy, rather than changing it in the module.
Check out parts 1 and 2 of the demo, which walks you through how to deploy OpenStack with the puppetlabs-grizzly module.
Multi-node OpenStack Grizzly with Puppet Enterprise: Deployment (Part 1 of 2)
The IT Melting Pot! 