Growth in ASP drives Citrix server-based business

10 July 2000 (Maxis Net) - Citrix vice president for Pacific, Alan Pettit, said that existing enterprises, schools and universities are using server-based computing to take advantage of the legacy PC that integrates 386 machines, old Apples and UNIX systems.

Another growth driver is the increasing number of people outsourcing their software application requirements.

"Through our software, we can separate the life cycle of a hardware and software which are closely connected," said Pettit.

Citrix Systems' server-based computing technology allows a 100 percent application execution from the server.

It provides application deployment and solutions aimed at maximizing return on computing investments.

With Citrix Systems, all software applications reside in the server and only screen updates and user input travel the network.

The task of supporting and managing desktops in large enterprises costs more money and time. By using Citrix technology, the company can save money in the total cost of ownership of software.

Citrix's business in the Pacific region has been growing exponentially, said Pettit. "We made a tremendous amount of investments in the Pacific Rim last year. Early this year, we bought a subsidiary in India," said Pettit.

In the Philippines, the authorized distributor for Citrix products is Tech Pacific.

"Tech Pacific and our channel partners did an outstanding job in driving Citrix awareness and business opportunities with a very fast growth curve here in the Philippines," Pettit added.

Citrix's MetaFrame is the world's first server-based software for Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server. It extends the functionality of Microsoft Terminal Server by supporting heterogeneous computing environments, enterprise-scale management and seamless desktop integration.

Citrix WinFrame is the only integrated server-based software that provides access to virtually any application, across any type of network connection to any type of client.

Both software products incorporate Citrix's Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) which provides the means for turning any client device into the ultimate thin client.

The server-based computing model employs three critical components. First, a multi-user operating system that enables multiple concurrent users to log on and run applications in separate, protected sessions on a single server.

Second, a computing technology separates the application's logic from its user interface, so only keystrokes, mouse clicks and screen updates travel the network. As a result, application performance is bandwidth-independent.

Third, centralized application and client management enable large computing environments to overcome the critical application deployment challenges of management, access, performance and security.

Server-based computing is made possible by two Citrix technologies - Independent Computing Architecture and Citrix MultiWin.

A defacto standard for server-based computing, the ICA protocol shifts application processing from the client device to the server. MultiWin, the technology licensed by Citrix to Microsoft to jointly create Terminal Server, enables multiple users to simultaneously access applications running on a server.

In the traditional client/server architecture, processing is centered around local execution using fat, powerful hardware components.

In the network computing architecture as defined by Sun, Oracle, Netscape, IBM and Apple, components are dynamically downloaded from the network into the client device for execution by the client.

With Citrix server-based computing approach, users are able to access business-critical applications including the latest 32-bit Windows-based and Java applications without requiring them to be downloaded to the client.

Citrix said this approach also provides considerable total cost of application ownership savings since these applications are centrally managed and can be accessed by users without having to rewrite them.