Citrix hits back at 'unworkable CAD' accusation

Property giant Mirvac last week said it had replaced its Citrix presentation server with Riverbed's Steelhead wide area data services (WDS) because the previous system was "unworkable" with huge CAD files, which is a claim that irked Citrix.

Mirvac CIO Chris Kennett's comparison of application delivery company Citrix's performance against its rival Riverbed last week was invalid according to Citrix's manager for channel business, Phil Dean-Jones.

Mirvac has recently implemented Riverbed's Steelhead wide area data services, which helped the company to connect its remote construction sites to its data network.

While talking to ZDNet Australia, Kennett said that computer aided drawing (CAD) was "unworkable" on Mirvac's previous system Citrix, but that if he were to compare the performance of Citrix and Riverbed on large Word documents, Riverbed was five to 10 times better than the Citrix system.

This is comparing apples with oranges, according to Dean-Jones, since the two services work on different principles.

The Citrix presentation server Mirvac was using worked on the principle of keeping files and applications at a central location and accessing them with remote consoles, whereas Steelhead compresses the files so that they can be transferred from the central datacentre to be worked on the consoles locally.

Both methods have their advantages, according to Gartner VP Joe Skorupa. When files and applications are stored centrally "nothing ever leaves the datacentre except coloured dots", he said, which is popular with companies such as banks, where it is not desirable for data to move for security reasons. Another advantage is that state of the art applications can be run without updating PCs in the branch office: only the data servers need to be kept up to date.

"For simple applications it does very well," said Skorupa, adding however that "graphic intensive applications have been a challenge". He said that to Citrix's credit their systems' ability to handle data intensive graphics has improved over time.

Steelhead on the other hand uses "very, very efficient compression" to make files easily transferable across a company's network, Skorupa said. This means that files can be worked on locally, translating to a boost in performance.

However this means more expensive licensing arrangements, according to Skorupa, since every computer running programs needs to have an individual licence. Another problem is that initially accessing files is "pathetically slow" he said, due to time to compress. This leads to forethought needing to be put into which files will be needed for remote locations to reduce delays, Skorupa said, adding "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

Skorupa did say that Riverbed's system was slightly better for CAD applications than Citrix, because it had been specifically optimised for them. However, he said that CAD is definitely useable on Citrix.

"To say that CAD in general is not doable on Citrix is simply not true," Skorupa said, adding that he knew of a large aircraft designer which ran its CAD using Citrix. Perhaps some of Mirvac's applications were not compatible, he said.

The comparison made by Kennett was made even more invalid according to Citrix's Dean-Jones, because the Citrix presentation server Mirvac was running was three to four years old. "There's been a lot of enhancements around graphically intensive applications since then," he said.

"I wouldn't have expected or suggested that they [Mirvac] use their presentation server" for what they needed to do, Dean-Jones said, adding that Citrix now has a product which works in the same way that Riverbed's Steelhead does and which he expects would deliver similar performance.