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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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- 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.
