With the introduction of Citrix
Systems’ XenDesktop 3—the company’s signature desktop virtualization
product—the application delivery specialist is trying to lower the cost of virtualization
for IT, while providing a more seamless multimedia experience for office-based
workers sitting in front of their desktops.
With XenDesktop 3, which Citrix officially releases Feb. 4, the
virtualization software has been designed to handle both streamed and hosted
desktops.
Citrix has been pushing desktop virtualization—along with along with cloud
computing—as the
big deal of 2009, offering customers a Delivery Center Suite that includes
Citrix XenDesktop, XenServer and App Receiver, which delivers virtual desktop
images from a centralized data center to the individual
client.
Although the two are complementary, Citrix has taken pains to publicly
separate XenDesktop 3, launched nearly six months after the
release of XenDesktop 2.1, from Project
Independence, in which the company has partnered with Intel and others to
deliver solutions for individual virtual desktops.
With the release of XenDesktop 3, not only is Citrix looking to challenge
VMware’s continued dominance of the x86 virtualization market, but it is also looking
to offer a better price to entice IT managers to create a centralized desktop
infrastructure that uses virtualization to deliver the operating system,
applications and data to employees.
While data security has always been a main selling point with centralized
virtualization desktop products, IT managers have balked at the cost of
building out a new infrastructure to support the technology.
Citrix claims XenDesktop 3 can lower costs on the administrative side by
slashing server and data center infrastructure needs by roughly 50 percent;
with its included XenServer hosting twice the number of virtual desktops per
server, it would only take 25 servers, as opposed to 50, to host 1,000
users. The suggested retail price for XenDesktop 3 begins at $75 per
concurrent user.
“This addresses a significant barrier for mainstream implementation,” said
Sumit Dhawan, vice president of product marketing for Citrix. “The biggest cost
component in capital expenses is now cut down in half.”
On the IT administration side, XenDesktop 3 offers a simplified environment,
with built-in profile management for both hosted and streamed desktops; Citrix
claims this will eliminate most, if not all, of the Microsoft Windows profile
issues.
In addition to reducing costs and streamlining the IT management
environment, XenDesktop 3 aims to boost the end user’s experience through HD-X
technologies, which provide a “high-definition experience” for users by
accelerating the local network’s multimedia capabilities. HD-X technologies
take a holistic approach, optimizing the entire system from data center through
network and individual device.
“Servers usually process video uncompressed,” said Dhawan. “In XenDesktop 3,
the file is sent compressed to the endpoint, and then processed at the
endpoint. The processing of multimedia is done on the local machine.”
By relying on the hardware of the individual desktop, HD-X also results in
higher speeds for other processing-intensive functions, such as photo editing
and archiving, geospatial and mapping, and three-dimensional CAD (computer-aided
design) applications.
Furthermore, the system utilizes what Dhawan terms “intelligent
orchestration,” where the system detects server, network and endpoint
capabilities, and turns on the appropriate network optimization based on the
delivery structure’s capabilities.
“This makes maintenance simple and assures the best user experience without
forcing them to go through an unnecessary server upgrade,” said Dhawan.
XenDesktop 3 will also offer full support for USB
devices such as MP3 players, smart cards and digital cameras.
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