Citrix Unveils Vision To Transform Desktop Computing

Citrix Systems has unveiled the next phase of its vision and roadmap to radically change the economics of desktop computing. This strategy builds on last year’s debut of Citrix XenDesktop, an enterprise virtualisation solution that enables IT to significantly reduce costs by delivering server-based, hosted virtual desktops to office workers as a centrally-managed service.

Citrix’s new announcement enhances those benefits and extends them to mobile workers with the introduction of a new client-side hypervisor that runs directly on each end user’s PC or laptop computer. This new hypervisor, being developed in collaboration with Intel Corporation, will be productised in an upcoming solution from Citrix code-named ‘Project Independence’.

Five Predictions for the Next Era of Desktop Computing

The addition of Project Independence to the Citrix Delivery Centre product family will have an impact on the way enterprise IT delivers and manages desktops, as well as how users experience those desktops. To realise this vision, Citrix will continue working closely with strategic partners like Microsoft and Intel to provide customers with open, innovative solutions that leverage their existing investments and help them transition to a new era of desktop computing where the old burdens and limitations no longer apply. Citrix believes this new era will be characterised by five fundamental changes.

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Prediction #1 – Your Company Will No Longer Own Your Laptop

The ability to run secure, centrally-managed, virtual machines directly on end-user devices will enable companies to adopt large-scale ‘bring-your-own-computer’ (BYOC) programmes for mobile employee laptops, much like they do with cell phones and other mobile devices today. Instead of receiving generic, standard-issue laptops from IT when they join the company, employees in a BYOC programme will receive vouchers, which can be applied to the purchase and support of any laptop they choose.

More importantly, moving to a BYOC model will allow CIOs to free themselves once and for all from the losing battle of trying to own, secure and manage laptops for an increasingly mobile and independent workforce. Today, most IT organisations install a set of standard desktop images on each laptop when an employee is first hired, physically deliver that laptop to the employee, and then try to patch, manage and secure everything remotely. As each laptop is customised, updated and mixed with personal data and applications, however, this task becomes increasingly complex, error-prone and difficult to secure.

The Citrix Xen-based client hypervisor will enable IT to deliver each employee’s corporate desktop into a secure, centrally-managed virtual machine that runs directly on that user’s laptop, making these problems a thing of the past. Hardware upgrades, employee moves and lost or stolen laptops are also much less of an issue because IT administrators can centrally terminate the corporate desktop on any device and quickly deliver it to a new laptop.

Prediction #2 – Your Company Will Spend More on Coffee and Office Supplies Than it Does on Desktop Management

Companies today spend billions of dollars trying to manage desktops and PCs across a far flung enterprise – installing, updating, securing, patching and managing operating systems and applications on each device independently. Billions more are spent trying to backup and recover user data, diagnose and repair hardware problems and manage granular user access control policies at the network level. By combining centralised image management with the ability to run personalised virtual desktops, Project Independence will lower the cost and complexity of desktop management.

Instead of trying to control the nearly infinite combination of variables on each unique desktop, Project Independence will incorporate technology from XenDesktop that enables IT departments to centrally manage one copy of Windows, one copy of each application and one instance of each employee’s user data and personal profile. These components will then be assembled and delivered as an on-demand service to secure virtual machines running directly on each user’s device.

Project Independence will also fully automate data backup and recovery, even for mobile users, as changes to corporate virtual desktops on local machines are synchronised automatically with the data centre.

Prediction #3 – You Will Access Your Corporate Desktop from Whatever Device is Most Convenient at the Time

Most corporate employees today are accustomed to accessing their corporate e-mail from any location on a variety of different devices, depending on where they are or what they are doing at the time. As IT departments begin delivering virtual desktops as an on-demand service, users will have a similar level of flexibility for their corporate desktop and applications. Employees in this model will be able to access their corporate desktop from any location – at home, in the office, or on the road – using whatever device is most convenient at the time, even if it is not one they own.

Citrix XenDesktop does this today for hosted virtual desktops when users are connected. Project Independence will extend a similar level of flexibility to mobile users as well. These virtual desktops will be centrally managed in the data centre and always available to users, even when disconnected from the network. And because virtual desktops are delivered in an isolated “bubble” with no dependency on the underlying device, the integrity of the corporate desktop, applications and data will remain intact at all times.

Prediction #4 – You Will Switch Back and Forth Between Work and Personal Desktops on the Same Device, Without Thinking Twice

Companies, who allow employees to run personal applications and data on corporate-owned computers, inspire goodwill with employees, but this comes at the cost of significant management complexity and risk for the corporation. By delivering corporate desktops as a service from the data centre into secure virtual machines, companies can eliminate this increasingly untenable tradeoff.
Employees in this new model will be able to seamlessly combine their work and personal computing into one device, working fluidly between the two with no risk to the company. This will allow users to intuitively switch back-and-forth between consumer applications or Facebook accounts on their personal desktop, and the CRM database on their corporate desktop, without ever compromising the security of the centrally-managed corporate desktop.

Prediction #5 – You Will Never Complain About Your PC Being Too Slow Again

The fact is, PCs are never refreshed as fast as software and hardware technology advances, leaving users always wanting something ‘newer, better, faster’. When desktops are delivered as a service, management, patches and upgrades take place in the data centre to a single golden master and are delivered instantly to all users at the same time. Users in this model no longer have to wait for patch updates or for IT to make service calls for their systems – they simply receive the newest desktop available automatically.

Availability

Citrix XenDesktop and the entire Citrix Delivery Centre product family are available today. The initial delivery of Project Independence, including the new Xen client hypervisor optimised for Intel vPro technology, is planned for the second half of 2009.