Citrix sets sights on SMEs

Citrix hopes to claim a bigger slice of the small to mid-range market with a low-cost version of its Presentation Server software which organisations use to deploy and manage thin-client applications.

Like many suppliers, Citrix is hoping to claim a slice of an SME market which analysts believe is heating up. The company, which has had a lot of success in the UK selling to the public sector and especially local government, is hoping that the performance and price improvements that some users find with its thin-client approach will prove successful.

However, some organisations and especially small businesses have been wary of the perceived complexity of implementing thin-client applications.

Citrix Access Essentials, unveiled last week, is intended for systems with up to 75 users at a cost of around $250 (£143) per seat which includes Windows Terminal Server Client Access Licenses and a secure access point based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Although the new version is a cheaper version of the standard Citrix software, nothing important has been cut out, according to Paul Burke, senior product manager at Citrix. "There's nothing exceptional that's in the enterprise version that's not in this," he said. "What we've focused on is simplifying it and making it more usable."