I recently discovered a video on “Citrix TV” that does as good a job as I’ve ever seen in presenting the big picture of desktop and application virtualization using XenApp and XenDesktop (which, as we’ve said before, includes XenApp now). The entire video is just over 17 minutes long, which is longer than most videos we’ve posted here (I prefer to keep them under 5 minutes or so), but in that 17 minutes, you’re going to see:
How easy it is for a user to install the Citrix Receiver
Self-service application delivery
Smooth roaming (from a PC to a MacBook)
Application streaming for off-line use
A XenDesktop virtual desktop following the user from an HP Thin Client…
…to an iPad…
…as the iPad switches to 3G operation aboard a commuter train…
…to a Mac in the home office…
…to a Windows multi-touch PC in the kitchen…
…to an iPhone on the golf course.
And a demo of XenClient to wrap things up.
I remember, a few years ago, sitting through the keynote address at a Citrix conference and watching a similar video on where the technology was headed. But this isn’t smoke and mirrors, and it isn’t a presentation of some future, yet-to-be-released technology. All of this functionality is available now, and it’s all included in a single license model. The future is here. Now.
I think you’ll find that it’s 17 minutes that are well-spent:
We’ve been working with Citrix products pretty much as long as there have been Citrix products, and one of the toughest questions to answer over the years has been, “Will my application run in a Citrix environment?” Often, the answer was, “Ummm…..maybe, but we need to test it.”
Back in the bad old days of DOS and the first few revs of Windows, programmers could get away with taking shortcuts like talking directly to hardware peripherals without using the proper APIs – in fact they could make things run faster on the limited hardware of the day by doing so. But as we moved forward into NT-based execution platforms and multi-user server operating systems, those programming shortcuts played holy you-know-what with application compatibility.
As time went on, more and more of those applications either died off or got re-written to comply with the proper programming conventions. But for a long time you would still find applications that were mostly well-written…but they had shortcomings like hard-coded UNC paths. They might, for example, create some kind of temporary “scratch” file in C:\TEMP, which may be just fine on a single-user PC, but is not fine at all on a Terminal Server that’s supporting 40 or 50 concurrent users, all of whom are trying to write to that file in the C:\TEMP directory and overwriting (or corrupting) one another’s data.
Sometimes a good “Citrix mechanic” could figure out what was going wrong, and manually tweak something (often in the Windows registry, which is not for the faint of heart) that would allow the application to play nicely in a multi-user environment. Over the years, our own engineers were able to make some applications work when their own manufacturers said it couldn’t be done. More recently, application virtualization tools such as Microsoft’s App-V, or the packaging and streaming tool included with XenApp, have made it easier to do things like redirect hard-coded paths to user-specific paths.
We finally reached the point where most 32-bit Windows applications would run just fine in a Terminal Services/XenApp environment, although some manufacturers still won’t support running their applications this way, probably because they don’t want to go to the extra effort of testing and certification. (You know who you are.)
But now we have a whole new level of potential incompatibility: 64-bit execution. Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64-bit only. The latest version of XenApp, v6.0, is designed specifically for 2008 R2. It’s a safe bet that there will never be another 32-bit version of Windows Server, so this is our new reality. And we’re finding that some apps that ran fine under Windows 2003 Terminal Services, and even on 32-bit Windows 2008 platforms, won’t run on 2008 R2. (And don’t even get me started about printing – that’s a whole discussion of its own!)
The good news is that there are a couple of Web resources out there that are devoted to answering the question, “Will my application run?” The first is the Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Community Verified Compatibility Center. You’ll find separate sections there for Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2. The other site is the Citrix Ready Community Verified site. There you will find information on over 4,000 third-party products including both hardware and software.
Of course, I can’t guarantee that you’re going to find your app listed on either site. But the odds are a heck of a lot higher than they were a few years ago, and that’s a very good thing.
Today, Citrix announced a new, permanent XenDesktop trade-Up program. (Well, mostly permanent – the special offer to users with expired Subscripion Advantage only runs through the end of 2011.) This new offer shouldn’t come as a big surprise, as all indications were that there would be some kind of upgrade path provided after the last trade-up program expired at the end of 2010. What did come as a surprise is the announcement of a concurrent-use (“CCU”) license model for XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum. The new CCU license is good news for XenDesktop v3 customers, some of whom have not upgraded to XenDektop v4 or v5 because they didn’t want to give up the CCU license model.
The new trade-up program will allow XenApp users to trade up to either the user/device-based license model or the new concurrent use license model. New concurrent use licenses cost roughly 2x the cost of a user/device license. Here are the high points of the new trade-up program:
As was the case with the earlier trade-up programs, XenApp users can choose a straight one-for-one deal, where they receive one user/device XenDesktop license for each XenApp license, or, if they trade up all of their XenApp licenses, they can choose a two-for-one deal, where they receive two user/device licenses for each XenApp license. It will just cost you a little more than it would have if you had done it before the end of 2010.
Through the end of 2011, customers with expired Subscription Advantage can trade up their licenses for the same price as customers with current Subscription Advantage – and take advantage of the two-for-one deal. After December 31, 2011, it will cost an additional $50/license if your Subscription Advantage is expired.
You can now choose to trade up your XenApp licenses one-for-one to XenDesktop concurrent use licenses – although it’s more expensive than trading up to user/device licenses.
“Trade-up PLUS” – If you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, you can purchase additional XenDesktop licenses (on the same order) for 10% off the suggested retail price. These additional licenses do not have to be the same product version as the version you’re trading up to, i.e., you could trade up to XenDesktop Platinum Edition, and purchase additional XenDesktop Enterprise licenses (although I’m not sure why you’d want to).
“Trade-up MAX” – If you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, and purchase additional XenDesktop licenses for all of your remaining users (on the same order), the additional licenses would be 35% off the suggested retail price. Again, the additional licenses do not have to be the same version as the trade-up licenses. The order must total a minimum of 2,500 XenDesktop licenses, including both the licenses received via the trade-up offer and the additional licenses. Citrix will accept data from Dun & Bradstreet or Hoovers.com, or the user count from an active Microsoft Enterprise Agreement as evidence of how many users you have.
Here is a summary of the new trade-up suggested retail prices:
Trade-up From
Trade-up 2:1 (User/Device)
Trade-up 1:1 (User/Device)
Trade-up 1:1 (CCU)
XD-E
XD-P
XD-E
XD-P
XD-E
XD-P
XenApp Platinum
n/a
$185
n/a
$135
n/a
$220
XenApp Enterprise
$130
$275
$85
$225
$155
$330
XenApp Advanced
$190
$330
$140
$280
$230
$395
XenApp Fundamentals
n/a
n/a
$140
$280
n/a
n/a
Note that if your Subscription Advantage is expired, all of the prices above will go up after December 31, 2011. Note also that if you purchased XenApp Fundamentals bundled with Microsoft Terminal Services CALs, and you want to keep those Terminal Services CALs after the trade-up, you must specify that on your trade-up order. Otherwise, the Terminal services CALs will be rescinded along with the XenApp Fundamentals licenses that you’re trading up.
Citrix has provided a new Trade-Up Calculator that makes it really easy to figure out what your trade-up cost will be. You simply enter your data – how many XenApp licenses you own, how many you’re trading up, what edition your trading up from and to, whether your Subscription Advantage is current, whether you’re trading up all of your licenses, and whether you want to purchase additional licenses along with your trade-up – and the calculator will give you the various options available to you, along with the suggested retail price of each option.
I’ve found that one of the least-understood features of XenApp is “VM hosted apps.” So, gentle reader, I thought it was time to try to bring some clarity to what is actually a very cool piece of technology, and may actually be the solution for how to continue to deliver IE6 for the Web apps that require it, even after you upgrade to Win7. (As you probably know, Microsoft has, so far, taken the position that packaging, streaming, or otherwise delivering IE6 by itself is a violation of their license – much to the consternation of users who have applications that depend on it.)
Why it exists
Anyone who has been around the block a few times with XenApp knows that there are some applications that just don’t play nicely in a multi-user environment. I can tell you that our own engineering team has become quite talented at making applications run in a XenApp environment even when the application vendors themselves said it couldn’t be done. And as the older DOS-based and 16-bit Windows applications gradually die of old age, things in general are getting better. Tools like application isolation and application streaming can help as well. But every now and then, you’ll run into an application that either just won’t run in a Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services) environment, or won’t play nicely with other applications, or misbehaves when more than one person at at time tries to run it.
We also occasionally run into applications that require some kind of hardware “dongle” as a license enforcement mechanism. Other applications have license mechanisms that are dependent on IP or MAC addresses, and/or save user-specific information that will require the application user to go back to the same system each time s/he wants to run the application. Finally, there may be users who need a very high-performance graphics processing unit, e.g., to run a graphics-intensive CAD program.
To help you deal with this, Citrix included a little bit of XenDesktop technology in XenApp, beginning with XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2. It’s only fair, after all, since XenApp functionality is now included in XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum Editions, but while XenDesktop 4 (and now XenDesktop 5) includes all the functionality of XenApp for delivering applications to your XenDesktop users, XenApp’s VM hosted apps feature contains just enough XenDesktop functionality to create virtual – or physical – desktop systems specifically to run individual applications. In fact, that’s all those systems do. You can’t deliver multiple VM hosted apps from a single PC Operating System (well, not very easily anyway).
How it works
First of all, you have to build out the basic components of a XenDesktop farm. Yes, it can share some components with the rest of your infrastructure, but you’re going to need to build a Desktop Delivery Controller, you’re going to need a XenDesktop farm database, you’re going to need either a virtualization host (if you’re going to use virtual PC instances) or some physical PCs or blades, and you’re going to need an Operating System image with the target application installed into it. You may also deploy Provisioning Services if you want to stream the OS image either to your virtual infrastructure or to your blade PCs. In short, you go through the same process that you would go through if you were putting together a XenDesktop infrastructure to deliver a virtual desktop…but in this case, we’re delivering an application, not a desktop.
Here’s a high-level overview of the process:
Create an OS image.
Install the XenDesktop Virtual Desktop Agent into the image.
Install the desired application. If the application needs “helper apps” (e.g., an accounting app may require Microsoft Excel to display reports), you can install them too. You can even install the Citrix Online Plugin, Offline Plugin, Single Sign-On Plugin, etc., if you want to launch those helper apps on a XenApp server or have XenApp stream them down to the desktop image for local execution.
Create a shortcut for your desired application. If you really need to launch multiple applications, or launch something like the Citrix Online Plugin, create a script or batch file to launch the applications you want to launch, then create a shortcut to that script or batch file instead.
Place that shortcut into the C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Service\SeamlessInitialProgram folder of your desktop image. NOTE: If you try to put more than one shortcut in that folder, you will get an error!
Using the Citrix XenDesktop tools, convert your image into a VHD if you’re going to be streaming it via Provisioning Services or deploying it in a virtual environment. Like any other XenDesktop image, it can be a private image that is either preassigned to a specific user or assigned on first logon, or it can be a public image that you use with Provisioning Services to boot and run multiple instances.
Publish that application. It can be displayed via the Citrix Web Interface right alongside other applications that are being delivered via XenApp.
When the user clicks the icon, the application will be launched within the desktop OS, but will run as a “seamless app,” meaning that it looks and feels to the user as though it was running locally (just as applications published from the XenApp farm do). The user will never know, or care, which apps are running on XenApp servers and which are running on desktop OS instances.
Just as you would with any other XenDesktop deployment, you can configure, via the Desktop Delivery Controller, how many OS instances you want running in an idle state at any given point in time during the day – this eliminates the need for the user to wait for the PC/OS to boot before launching the app. Remember, though, that a desktop OS is not multiuser…meaning that if you have ten people who may need to run that application at the same time, you have to provide resources for ten virtual PC instances (or ten blades, as the case may be). And if you have two different applications that need to be deployed this way, you’re probably going to need to provide separate resources for each application. (Yes, I suppose you could create a script that launched both apps – but do you really want your users to click on a single icon and launch two completely different apps? Never mind the fact that the users who need one of the apps may have no overlap with the users who need the other one.)
Here are a couple more things to remember:
Your users are going to be remotely interacting with a Microsoft Desktop OS. That means you’re going to have to comply with Microsoft’s VDI licensing requirements. We’ve beat that horse to death elsewhere in this blog, so we won’t go into it again here.
Citrix never expected that VM hosted apps would be used for more than one or two percent of all the applications you may need to deploy in a XenApp environment. But sometimes that one or two percent represent business-critical apps, even if they’re only business-critical to a handful of your users.
You do not need XenDesktop licenses to do this. Users who launch a VM hosted app will consume a concurrent-use license from your XenApp license server. Users who launch multiple apps, e.g., a VM hosted app and several other apps delivered via XenApp, will still consume a single license.
You could also use VM hosted apps to quickly deploy an application while you’re figuring out how to make that application run on XenApp. Once you’ve figured that out, just re-publish the application. The users will never know – they’ll go to the same Web Interface and click on the same icon, and the app will launch.
So – back where we started this: If you’re one of those who are struggling to figure out how you’re going to continue to support IE6 in your environment while still migrating your users off of Windows XP, this is one potential answer for you. Deploy IE6 on Windows XP using VM hosted apps. Your users will never see the XP desktop, so they’ll never know.
A very cool tool to have in your toolbox, in our opinion.
If you want to know more about VM hosted apps, here are a couple of videos from Citrix TV. The first is from the XenApp Expert Series, with our old buddy Vinny Sosa (on the left) and Modesto Tabares talking about various use cases for the feature. This one will take you about 25 minutes if you watch the whole thing:
…and here’s a more technical video from the Learning Lap series that actually takes you through the installation and configuration of VM hosted apps. This one is about 20 minutes long:
This is the conclusion of Steve Parlee’s interview with Josh Osborn and Dave Jolley of Wyse. In Part 1, they discussed the Xenith “zero-client” terminal and the new Windows Embedded Standard 7 thin client terminal. In this concluding segment, they talk in more detail about how the Xenith gets its configuration information, as well as the reliability and power savings of Wyse terminal devices compared with desktop PCs.
Recently, our own Steve Parlee sat down with Josh Osborn, the Wyse Regional Sales Manager for the Northwest, and Dave Jolley, our local Wyse Sales Engineer, to talk about what’s new in the Wyse product line. In this video, they talk about the Xenith “zero-client” device that was introduced last quarter, and the new Windows Embedded Standard 7 device.
According to an August 26 Gartner press release, your Windows 7 migration may have a painful impact on your budget. The heart of the problem is summed up in this quote from Gartner managing vice president Charles Smulders:
Corporate IT departments typically prefer to migrate PC operating systems (OSs) via hardware attrition, which means bringing in the new OS as they replace hardware through a normal refresh cycle. Microsoft will support Windows XP for four more years. With most migrations not starting until the fourth quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and PC hardware replacement cycles typically running at four to five years, most organizations will not be able to migrate to Windows 7 through usual planned hardware refresh before support for Windows XP ends.
Because of this time crunch, Gartner says that you really have only one of three options:
Accelerate your PC replacement schedule. This obviously will impact your capital budget.
Upgrade some of your existing PCs. Unfortunately, not all of your PCs are likely to support Windows 7 without some upgrades. In fact, Gartner estimates that 25% of the installed base of PCs will require some kind of hardware upgrade to run Windows 7. Also, unless you’re prepared to stretch out the life of these upgraded PCs beyond your usual upgrade cycle, those users are going to end up being migrated twice, not once, during the next four years. Gartner’s estimate of the migration cost per PC, assuming a large enterprise with 10,000 PCs where all PCs are upgraded: between $1,274 and $2,069, depending on how well-managed the environment is to begin with, which, by the way, is not a heck of a lot less than their estimated migration cost if you do just replace them.
Migrate some users to a “hosted virtual desktop” instead of a new PC.
If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know were we stand on the “hosted virtual desktop” issue. To most people, the term “hosted virtual desktop” refers to a virtual instance of a PC OS (e.g., Windows 7) running on a virtualized infrastructure such as VMware, Hyper-V, or XenServer. However, this is only one way to deliver a virtual desktop to a user. Other ways include:
Delivering a shared desktop from a server using Remote Desktop Services and XenApp (we’ve been doing this for years).
Streaming the PC OS from a common, shared image to a physical PC across the local area network. (Note that this would still require that the hardware in the physical PC be able to support the new OS.)
Streaming the PC OS to a client-side hypervisor (XenClient) so the client device can be disconnected from the network and continue to operate.
We’re also of the opinion that no single one of these approaches will fit all use cases. But the nice thing about Citrix XenDesktop is that you can mix and match any and all of these use cases to the needs of your users, all under a single license model.
It still isn’t going to be inexpensive. As Gartner points out, you have to build the virtual infrastructure to deliver those desktops, which will involve both capital costs and labor costs. Anyone who tells you that VDI will save you money in immediate capital costs compared with buying new PCs is not being straight with you. But you can, according to other studies, save up to 40% in your “Total Cost of Ownership” (“TCO”).
And your other alternatives aren’t inexpensive either. So why not take advantage of this opportunity to change the way you deploy and manage PCs? Take a look at what you can do with XenDesktop today, think about how much easier and less costly your Windows 7 roll out would be if you already had XenDesktop in place, and then think about how much easier and less costly your next major PC upgrade project will be if you deploy XenDesktop now.
Windows 7 is going to impact your budget one way or another. Gartner estimates that if you just decide to accelerate your upgrade cycle, the percentage of your IT budget that you spend on PCs will need to increase somewhere between 20% and 60% in 2011 and 2012. If, as in many organizations, your PC spending accounts for 15% of your overall IT budget, that means that in 2011 and 2012 you’re going to be spending between 18% and 25% of your budget on PCs instead of 15%. And that will impact other projects.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Gartner also predicts that the demand for “highly qualified Windows 7 migration IT personnel” will exceed supply in 2011 and 2012. Remember those discussions about supply & demand back in Economics 101? Yep, that means that IT labor costs are going to go up. In fact, Gartner predicts that the labor shortage, and higher costs, will persist into 2013 as organizations realize that they’re behind in their planned migration schedule and try to figure out what to do about it.
Mr. Smulders had a recommendation on that as well: “Begin talks with suppliers now about putting in place contracts that can deliver flexible levels of resources at a fixed rate over the migration period.”
Yesterday (August 25), Citrix formally announced XenDesktop 4 Feature Pack 2. It’s expected to be available by the end of September, and, of course, will be available at no charge to existing XenDesktop customers whose Subscription Advantage is current. The big news in this Feature Pack is the incorporation of XenClient and XenVault.
We’ve talked a lot about XenClient here, but haven’t said much about XenVault. It’s high time we did, because it’s a pretty cool piece of technology in its own right.
If you’ve used Citrix products in the past, you know that we have administrative control over whether, for example, users who are running applications on a XenApp server are able to save data back to a disk drive on their client device. With the advent of Smart Access (enabled by Access Gateway Enterprise policies), we can get even more granular: we might allow a user to save data to a client drive if they’re connecting from within the protected network, or connecting from a corporate-owned laptop, but deny that same user the ability to do so if they’re connecting from a personal device or public location like a hotel business center.
Unfortunately, once the data is on a client device, you now have a security risk. It could potentially be copied to a USB drive. The corporate laptop could be lost or stolen. (For some of the more high-profile examples, check out the “laptop losers hall of shame.”) Nevertheless, it’s often viewed as a risk we have to take so that our mobile users can be productive.
XenVault, which was first previewed at the Synergy event last May, is designed to address this risk. XenVault is a new plug-in for the Citrix Receiver. As such, its deployment and configuration are controlled through the Citrix Merchandising Server. To quickly review, Merchandising Server is the preferred tool Citrix has provided for installing and configuring client software. The first time a user authenticates to the Merchandising Server (through a simple browser interface), the Citrix Receiver will be pushed down and installed on the client device, together with whatever plug-ins and configuration details the administrator has defined for that user. Subsequently, the Citrix Receiver will check back with the Merchandising Server behind the scenes, and receive any configuration updates that may be available.
The XenVault plug-in creates a secure, encrypted (256-bit AES) storage area on the client hard disk. Typically, any application that is running remotely on a XenApp server or XenDesktop virtual PC will only be able to store data in the secure, encrypted location, if it is allowed to store data on the client drive at all. Same for an application that has been streamed via XenApp for local execution on the client (regardless of whether it was packaged with the Citrix streaming tools or with App-V). While the user will be able to use Windows Explorer to look at the secure location and see what files are there, the user will not be able to copy files from the secure location to a non-secured area of the hard disk, nor open the files with applications other than those specified by the administrator. For a deeper explanation of how this works, see Joe Nord’s blog post on the subject.
If the laptop is lost or stolen, the administrator can issue a “kill pill” that will cause the secure, encrypted area to be locked or deleted the next time the Receiver checks in with the Merchandising Server. Pretty cool.
If you can’t wait until the end of September to try it out, and you have a mycitrix login, you can download the XenVault technology preview now. And keep watching this space, because I’ve got a feeling that this will be a good subject for a future video blog.
The consumerization of IT – “Workers are bringing their own laptops and smartphones into the office and connecting them to corporate systems. More people than ever are telecommuting or working from home for a day or two a week. And, the number of Web-based tools has increased dramatically…”
Yep. In fact many companies are instituting “BYOPC” (Bring Your Own PC) policies, because in the long run it can be less expensive to give employees a fixed allowance and allow them to buy whatever they want than it is to issue – and maintain – a company-owned laptop. Citrix themselves instituted this policy a few years ago.
If you’re using XenApp or XenDesktop to provide access to your key line-of-business applications, you don’t care what the endpoint is. If your employee prefers a MacBook, fine. Want to use an iPad? No problem. Connecting in from your home PC because your kids are sick? We’ve got that covered, too. Just install the Citrix Receiver and you’re good to go.
The borderless network – “…today’s IT security model is more about risk management than network protection. Companies have to identify their most important data and then make sure it’s protected no matter who’s accessing it and from wherever and whatever device they’re accessing it from.”
Citrix likes to say that their products are “Secure by Design,” meaning that security is built into them from the ground up. First of all, when you’re accessing your virtual desktop remotely, or running a published application from a XenApp server, the data never leaves the data center. The remote endpoint (whatever it is) is just sending keystrokes and mouse movements to the data center and getting back pixel updates. On top of that, we can encrypt that data connection using the Citrix Access Gateway.
Citrix also gives you very granular control over whether files can be copied between client and server, and/or whether print jobs can be directed to a client-attached printer. In fact, using Advanced Access Control policies, those controls can be context-sensitive, i.e., you might allow files to be copied to the client device if the client device is a company-owned laptop, but not if it is a home PC; or you might allow client-attached printing if the client is connecting from a branch office, but not if the same user, using the same client device, is connecting from home, or from a hotel.
The cloudy data center – Let me go on record as saying that the most cloudy thing about the cloud is trying to understand what someone means when they say the word. Not unlike the word “portal” a few years ago, the first question that usually needs to be asked in any discussion about cloud computing is: “When you say ‘cloud,’ what exactly do you mean?”
But the point to remember is that when you’re delivering applications via Citrix, users don’t know and don’t care where the data center is or where the applications are being executed. It doesn’t matter. Want to move your entire infrastructure to a co-lo? Fine. Want to have multiple data centers with automatic failover from one to the other? We can do that, too. By some definitions of the term, we’ve been building “private clouds” since the release of WinFrame back in the mid-90s.
The state of outsourcing – “Outsourcing is thriving in many different forms, and it’s reasonable to expect that it will accelerate.”
We made the point above that users don’t know and don’t care where the data center is. The fact is, for about 90% of what they need to do, neither do the administrators. Virtualization in general, and Citrix products in particular, make it very easy to administer, troubleshoot, and repair issues remotely. We built the entire Evans Fruit Company infrastructure without ever having our engineer set foot on site. In fact, actually dispatching an engineer to a customer location is now the exception rather than the rule.
The mobilization paradigm – “While PCs still make sense on the desks of knowledge workers, for all of these other workers who regularly move around as part of their daily job, the stationary PC often changes the natural flow of their routine because they have to stop at a system to enter data or complete a task. That’s about to change. Mobile computers in the form of smartphones and touchscreen tablets (like the iPad) have taken a big leap forward in the past four years. They are instant-on, easy to learn because of the touchscreen, and they have a whole new ecosystem of applications designed for the touch experience…”
Very true…but these same users are going to still need to access your traditional line-of-business applications, which will not be transformed overnight into touchscreen enabled apps. It is axiomatic that, in IT, nothing ever actually goes away – instead, new technology just gets layered over the top of old technology…which is why you’ll still find applications running on big mainframes in a lot of enterprises. So how do you manage that transition?
Once again, Citrix comes through. There’s a Citrix Receiver for the iPhone, one for the iPad, one for Windows Mobile phones, one for the Android, and just a couple of months ago, Citrix released a version of the Receiver for BlackBerry devices. And, of course, Receivers for Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs have long been available. I don’t know of any other product or technology that offers this kind of flexibility in delivering applications to users regardless of location, connection, or endpoint device.
So a big “Thank you!” to Jason Hiner for an excellent post. You’ve just described, in a nutshell, why Moose Logic is still excited to be a Citrix partner after all these years. Just remember, as you work to adapt to all of these trends that are indeed changing the IT landscape, we’ve got your back.
Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s one week to go on the Citrix XenDesktop 4 Trade-Up Promotion. Here’s a quick recap:
The XenDesktop 4 Enterprise and Platinum Editions include all of the functionality of the corresponding XenApp edition. In other words, if you buy XenApp licenses today, you get XenApp. If you buy XenDesktop licenses, you get XenDesktop and XenApp.
…however, the license model changes: XenApp licenses have always been – and continue to be – based on concurrent use. If you own 100 XenApp licenses, it doesn’t make any difference how many users hit your XenApp farm, you’re just limited to a maximum of 100 at any given time. XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum licenses are non-concurrent – they are either per user or per device (your choice).
…on the other hand, XenDesktop licenses are only about half the price per license as XenApp licenses. That means if your concurrency ratio (the ratio of total users to concurrent users) is less than 2-to-1, you’re better off buying XenDesktop licenses even if all you plan to use today is XenApp! You’ll pay less money, and you’ll have all that XenDesktop functionality in your back pocket ready to be deployed when you’re ready.
The current trade-up promotion allows you to convert your existing XenApp licenses to XenDesktop licenses at a price that you will probably never see again. This promotion is ending June 30.
If your Citrix Subscription Advantage is current, and you trade up all of your XenApp licenses, Citrix will give you two XenDesktop licenses for every XenApp license you trade up. E.g., if you have 100 XenApp licenses, your Subscription Advantage is current, and you trade up all 100 of them, you’ll end up with 200 XenDesktop licenses.
If your Subscription Advantage has been expired for a while, you may find that it’s less expensive to trade up to XenDesktop (which will come with a year of Subscription Advantage) than to pay the fee to get Subscription Advantage reinstated on your XenApp licenses. You won’t get the 2-for-1 deal, so you’ll have to look closely at whether the new license model will mean you have to buy additional licenses, which will obviously affect whether or not the total cost is advantageous to you, but it’s worth running the numbers to find out.
If the Subscription Advantage renewal on your XenApp licenses is coming due soon, consider the benefits of redirecting those renewal dollars to help pay for the trade-up. That can make an already-sweet deal even sweeter.
Citrix has a helpful on-line trade-up calculator that you can use to help you compare costs. You’ll need to enter (1) how many XenApp licenses you own, (2) how many of them you want to trade up, (3) what version of XenApp you own, (4) what version of XenDesktop you want to trade up to, and (5) whether or not your Subscription Advantage is current.
I suppose it’s possible that, come July 1, Citrix will announce that they’re extending the promotion…but I doubt it. So far, everyone I’ve talked to at Citrix has assured me that it will not be extended. I’m sure that there will still be an upgrade path after July 1, but it will cost you more money than the current promotion.
One more thing – if you’re going to do this, please don’t wait until the afternoon of June 30 to issue your purchase order! June 30 is like the “triple witching hour” – it’s end-of-month, end-of-quarter, and end-of-promotion. So it’s bound to be crazy busy in the Citrix order entry department. We’ve been requesting that all of our customers get their orders to us by end of business on the 29th, just to make sure that we can get the order placed through distribution and into Citrix’s hands before end of business in Fort Lauderdale on the 30th.
P.S.: We’re frequently asked why Citrix is making the change to non-concurrent licensing for XenDesktop. The main rationale is that if you’re looking at a serious desktop virtualization initiative, your concurrency ratio is probably going to be close to 1-to-1 anyway, so you won’t get much benefit from a concurrent license model. It also aligns more closely with the Microsoft VDI licensing model.
The important thing to remember is that if you are in that situation, you’ll actually spend less money and get more functionality for it, because the XenDesktop licenses will cost you roughly half of what it would cost to buy an equivalent number of XenApp licenses.
And if your use case is primarily to support a large pool of remote users, but you will never have more than half of them logged on at any given time, you can still purchase XenApp licenses to support those users, and they will still be concurrent use licenses.
