Citrix Counters VMware with Desktop Virtualization Upgrades

The market battle to stake out stronger positions in the desktop virtualization business appears to be heating up.

Only a week after VMware launched a spiffy new edition of its View virtualized desktop, Citrix Systems Nov. 17 announced upgrades to its own desktop virtualization software. Hewlett-Packard continues to upgrade its own VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) offerings every few months, and Microsoft and IBM are also in that game.

Citrix's latest offerings include a new Dazzle installation for Windows and Macintosh computers and new versions of Citrix Receiver for Windows and Mac-plus three popular types of handhelds: iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

Dazzle is a user application that works with Citrix's XenDesktop and runs on any Windows or Mac computer. It serves as a sort of home page for all corporate applications set up for employees in the virtual desktop system.

Citrix Receiver, which works with Dazzle, is the universal client installed on any of the above devices that employees use to access other corporate applications and desktops. Receiver enables users to bring up the corporate VDI system in a separate window, so VDI and local applications can be run side by side, if necessary.

The first version of Receiver, which launched back in May, has already attracted about 250,000 downloads from Apple's iPhone store, Citrix Vice President of Product Marketing Sumit Dhawan told eWEEK.

Dhawan said desktop virtualization appears to be following a similar adoption curve to server virtualization, which started becoming prevalent in production use about two years ago. The advent of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system also is causing IT managers to look closer at desktop virtualization, Dhawan said.

Citrix Dazzle and Receiver are free of charge to any Citrix XenDesktop or Citrix XenApp customer. Dazzle and Receiver will be made available to all Citrix customers in December.

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