The IT Melting Pot!

This is a great summary recap that George Kuruvill has done of Citrix Synergy 2015! Great work and enjoy this blog post!

For those of you who were not able to attend Citrix Synergy this year & dont have the time to sit through the key note recordings, I decided to put together a condensed version of some of the key announcements. So here goes!

Citrix Workspace Cloud

• Citrix hosted control plane that enables customers to deliver a comprehensive mobile workspace to end users.
• Gives customers the flexibility to host workloads on premises, in public or private clouds.
• Control plane also provides end to end monitoring of user connections.
• Evergreen infrastructure since Citrix maintains all core infrastructure components.
• Workspace Cloud Connector installed on premises on a Win 2k12 server that establishes SSL communication between control plane and customer environment. Used to talk to infrastructure components like Active Directory and hypervisors hosting workload

I wrote a blog on CWC and the value proposition a month back that you can find here.

SYN 217 –  Workspace Cloud – Technical Overview [Video]

Citrix Lifecycle Management

• Comprehensive cloud based service that can be used to design, deploy and manage both Citrix and other enterprise applications.
• Based on the ScaleXtreme technology.
• Lifecycle Management enables customers/partners to deploy infrastructure not only on premises but also public/private clouds (resource locations)
• Customers/Partners have the ability to create blueprints to automate infrastructure deployments end to end. Examples of blueprints include a XD deployment for instance where you could not only install all the XD infrastructure but also automate the installation of all supporting infrastructure like Active Directory, SQL etc.
• Vendors have the ability to create blueprints as well that can then be consumed by customers and partners alike.
• Customers/Partners also have the ability to incorporate scripts (new/existing) into the deployment.
• Once a blueprint is developed, its added to a library. Any resource within the library can then be deployed to a resource location (on premises, public/private cloud)
• Another key benefit of the Lifecycle Management technology is the ability to automate application upgrades.

XenApp/XenDesktop

• Xenapp 6.5 maintenance extended till end of 2017, EOL extended till 06/2018. Details here
• New Feature Pack for XA 6.5 (enhance storage performance, Lync support enhancements, UPM enhancements, Director “Help Desk” troubleshooting”, Storefront 3.0, Receiver.next)
• XenApp/XenDesktop 7.6 FP2  (End of Q2)
  • New Receiver X1
  • Lync 2013 on Mac
  • Touch ID Support
  • HDX with Framehawk
  • Native Receiver for Linux
  • Linux Apps and Desktops (Redhat and SUSE support)
  • Desktop Player for Mac 2.0 (June)
  • Desktop Player for Windows (Tech Preview)

SYN 233 – Whats new in XenApp and XenDesktop [Video]

SYN 319 – Tech Update for XenApp and XenDesktop  [Video]

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