Citrix Makes the Desktop Virtual With XenDesktop

May 21, 2008

Hoping to stay one step ahead of rivals VMware, Citrix Systems is now shipping XenDesktop its product line of desktop virtualization software.

Announced on Tuesday at the company Citrix annual Synergy conference in Houston, XenDesktop comes in five editions, including a bare bones free Express Edition that will give small businesses and developers the opportunity to test the product for up to 10 users without having to worry about licensing fees.

XenDesktop offers the Windows desktop to clients across the network, using technology of virtual machine. These virtualized desktops are actually running on a central server, making it easier for them to be managed by IT staff.

After taking a virtual monopoly on the remote Windows desktop software and connection, Citrix has been feeling some heat lately competitive VMware. Analysts say VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is still a year or two away from providing tough competition for Citrix, but the provider of virtualization software, which is majority-owned EMC, Citrix has clearly care.

In October last year, Citrix U.S. spends $ 500 million to buy VMware competitor XenSource. XenDesktop uses Xen Hypervisor software, Citrix and has a data center product called XenServer que se basa en XenSource products.

Although XenDesktop takes a different approach Citrix software older XenApp (formerly known as Presentation Manager), is a similar type of product. With XenApp, users are delivered applications, or even very basic Windows desktop environments published called, from a central server.

Published desks are generic and can not be easily customized for individual users. By contrast, XenDesktop gives users a full-featured Windows environment, but can still managed centrally by the IT staff.

This will cause XenDesktop more attractive to many desktop users in the company, said David Roussain, Citrix vice president of corporate marketing virtualization.

“We see that the market for desktop virtualization will grow dramatically over the next five years,” he said. “Companies need to find a way to reduce the cost of delivering desktops in the enterprise.”

That need for centralized control desktop can resort to very large companies who are concerned about such things as desktop policy compliance, but smaller companies with Citrix is left of traditional products, which are widely used to give workers the Remote access to applications, said Romano Gruzdev, CEO of IT consultancy Sequentur, in Arlington, Virginia. “I do mostly small and medium enterprises, and for them, I do not see how you’re going to be an advantage to have XenDesktop.”

Because it offers a customized version of Windows, where things like Windows DLL (Dynamic Link Library) can be changed, XenDesktop will make it easier for some applications to work with XenApp. However, because the software is running at a distance, there will always be limitations. The graphics programs that use a large amount of processor power can not work well in environments XenDesktop, for example.

And companies that are hundreds of endowment presentation desktop in a single server XenApp will have to add hardware to serve until many versions of Windows using XenDesktop. Roussain says a Citrix server that could provide 200 to 300 desktops presentation can handle perhaps 30 desktop virtual machine with XenDesktop.

The beer battle between Citrix and VMware in the market for desktop virtualization ultimately be a good thing for customers, said Brian Madden, an independent industry analyst who publishes a popular blog desktop virtualization. “Over the past 10 years, Citrix is a complete monopoly. There was nobody else in the company Citrix doing what he was doing,” he said. Let’s go for the first time, market-driven pricing versus monopoly driven prices. ”

In fact, some customers can already see signs of this in the announcement on Tuesday. Platinum and Enterprise XenDesktop customers get a free license to use XenApp with their virtual desktops. Normally, XenApp costs $ 450 per user concurrent Company and $ 600 per license Platinum. That is more than $ 295 and $ 396 the company and platinum XenDesktop users pay.

Available immediately, XenDesktop also comes in standard and advanced editions, which cost $ 75 and $ 195 per concurrent user.

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