XenApp 5 - Citrix removes desktop virtualization inhibitors

Bill Hartwick, Citrix's Senior Director Product Management in its application virtualization group, and I had a very interesting conversation the other day. During the conversation we examined what has been holding back deployments of various forms of desktop virtualization technology. We also discussed Citrix's XenApp 5 (a product that has had several names to confuse the innocent including MetaFrame, WinFrame, Presentation Manager and now XenApp). What's clear to me is that Citrix has accumulated the products to address the good, the bad and the unfortunate in the area of desktop virtualization.

I believe you'd be impressed if you saw a demonstration of all of the capabilities Citrix is bringing to the market. It can integrate cross platform access virtualization in just about any combination and paramutation of Windows, Linux and Mac OS; Windows applicaiton virtualization and both virtual client and virtual server environments. I saw a session started on a Windows system running locally using an encapsulated application that had been streamed down to the client system. Then I saw that session move into the "cloud". Once there, I saw that same session accessed from a Mac. The demo also included showing how that session could be access via a Web browser from quite an interesting number of desktop environments.

I can easily see how this concept could be extended in the future to address the needs of people using handheld systems including Blackberries, Windows Mobile, iPhones and the like.

I'd suggest getting a demo of Citrix's software. I'm sure you'll be impressed too.