Citrix unveils next phase of Citrix Delivery Centre product strategy at Synergy 2008 Conference

Today at Citrix Synergy, the event where virtualisation, networking and application delivery meet, Citrix Systems announced the expansion of its Citrix Delivery Centre product family with two important new additions.

The new Citrix Desktop Receiver and Citrix App Receiver are lightweight software clients that run on end-user devices and receive delivery of centralised desktops and applications with an unparalleled user experience.

Both receivers support plug-ins from existing Citrix delivery infrastructure systems as well as third-parties.

Combined with the rest of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, Desktop Receiver and App Receiver provide an end-to-end application delivery infrastructure that contrasts the traditional distributed computing model.

Instead of requiring the installation and management of applications on every desktop, which results in complexity across an increasingly diverse user base, Citrix Delivery Center allows companies to centralise their applications and desktops closer to headquarters and deliver them to users in any location as a highly efficient on-demand service. This approach can dramatically reduce costs, improve security and enhance end-user experience.

Citrix Desktop Receiver is available today for free download and is included with both Citrix XenDesktop as well as Citrix Ready desktop appliances. Citrix App Receiver will be available for free download in the second half of 2008.

"Citrix is executing on its application delivery strategy with Citrix Delivery Center," said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Its end-to-end architectural approach to IT virtualisation and shift toward a service delivery model creates an opportunity for IT to improve its service level within the business. Citrix Delivery Center encompasses endpoints, data centre servers and the network that bridges a common framework together that can be tuned to rapidly respond to change and workload demand. With these options, organisations can move towards a dynamic delivery centre model and customise their virtualisation strategy based upon their physical assets, user locations, security requirements and operational objectives."

Citrix Desktop Receiver is a lightweight software client designed to work with Citrix XenDesktop to give office workers fast, easy, secure access to their virtual desktops from any location. Desktop Receiver features:

* Full security and maximum bandwidth efficiency for virtual desktops accessed over the network.
* An innovative 'Instant On' technology that allows virtual desktops to start up in a fraction of the time it takes to boot PCs running a traditional installed desktop.
* High-speed virtual delivery technology that makes day-to-day desktop usage feel as responsive and snappy as a locally installed desktop, regardless of how far away the user is from the data centre where the virtual desktop is actually running.

Desktop Receiver will serve three primary use cases within a typical company:

* It will come pre-installed on a new class of devices called 'desktop appliances' that are fully optimised for virtual desktop delivery and purchased by customers from leading hardware vendors as part of an overall desktop refresh programme (see related announcements this week from Citrix Ready hardware vendors joining the new Citrix Desktop Appliance Programme).
* IT organisations transitioning to a virtual desktop model can also install Desktop Receivers on older PCs, breathing new life into them by allowing them to use virtual desktops running on modern, high performance servers in the data centre.
* End-users can download and install Desktop Receiver on their home PCs to securely access their virtual office desktop from home, just as they might download Adobe Acrobat Reader or Flash Player to access PDF files or Flash-enabled Web sites.

All editions of XenDesktop are optimised to work with the Desktop Receiver client to create an unparalleled user experience.

Citrix App Receiver is a lightweight, auto-updating software client designed to work with Citrix XenApp and Citrix NetScaler to give any user fast, easy, secure access to any application from any location. Highlights include:

* A highly extensible framework with plug-ins designed to communicate with each of the core components of the Citrix Delivery Center product family to enhance performance, security, monitoring and end-user experience.
* Existing Citrix software clients will be re-designed as service controlled plug-ins that snap into App Receiver. This extensible architecture will also allow third-parties to create plug-ins that snap into App Receiver to enhance other aspects of the end-to-end delivery process without cluttering up desktops with additional software clients.
* App Receiver will be transparent to end-users and will dramatically simplify the application delivery process for IT administrators by giving them a single, easy to manage client footprint on each desktop.

"Transforming data centres into delivery centres requires an end-to-end approach to application delivery that extends all the way to the client," said Wes Wasson, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer, Citrix Systems. "By extending the Citrix Delivery Center product family with repeaters and receivers, Citrix is taking the next logical step to make application and desktop delivery a truly on-demand service for millions of users worldwide."

With these new additions, the Citrix Delivery Center product family now includes four classes of infrastructure components deployed along the line-of-sight between applications and desktops in the data centre, and end-users in any location: controllers, gateways and receivers. Citrix Delivery Center also includes tools that make it easy to orchestrate communications between each of these components and third-party systems (see illustrations of Citrix Delivery Center here - www.citrix.com/deliverycomponents). Each of these components plays a key role in making IT environments more secure, efficient and responsive to business changes.

* Controllers: The Citrix Delivery Center product family begins with four "delivery controllers" that allow customers to centralise applications and desktops in the data centre and control their delivery over the network to end-users:

* XenDesktop - virtualises and delivers Windows desktops
* XenApp - virtualises and delivers Windows applications
* XenServer - virtualises and delivers application workloads on servers
* NetScaler - optimises and delivers Web applications

* Gateways: Citrix Access Gateway sits at the edge of the corporate network and provides secure application access to authorised users.
* Receivers: Citrix Desktop Receiver and Citrix App Receiver enhance the performance, security and user experience of desktops and applications delivered to end-users.
* Orchestration: Citrix Workflow Studio orchestrates communications across the Citrix Delivery Center by taking commands from virtually any product and presenting them as graphical objects that can be easily linked together on a visual workflow canvas. This allows administrators to integrate previously disconnected processes far more easily across Citrix and third-party products, allowing them to work together as a single cohesive system.