Citrix becomes your flexible friend

THE HOT NEWS from the Citrix iForum here in Edinburgh is that Citrix has outgrown its 'Martini' style model of anytime, any place, anywhere and has progressed into a 'flexible friend', emphasising access as this year's key word.

Mark Templeton, Citrix' CEO envisages "a world beyond server based computing, explaining that Citrix' new focus is the strategic advantage that can be gained by giving secure and simply managed access to a range of devices on top of Citrix' mainstay of server based management and control.

As well as the obvious benefits of more productive employees, reduced costs and informed customers, Templeton, pointed out that in this era of heightened terrorist threat a sound access strategy is also excellent from a disaster recovery perspective. He cite the speedy return to business achieved by Citrix customers in the 9/11 tragedy. The Citrix roadmap illustrates this message. The portfolio of products is collected under the Metaframe Access Suite banner which has just reached release 3.0. With their March 2004 acquisition of Expertcity, Citrix' offerings now include web based access services such as GoToMyPC, giving secure, managed access to any device published to a hosted server on the internet, GoToAssist, a web based screen sharing product that allows support centres to provide instant on-line desktop support and GoToMeeting, similar to Citrix's Conferene Manager but working outside of the Metaframe Access Infrastructure.

Presentation Server 3.0 sees improved mobile access with seamless reconnection between devices, and critically, video streaming that finally works, unlike the last attempt, Video Frame, which according to Keith Turnbull, vp for product development with Citrix, was released at the 'wrong time'. Browser performance has been accelerated over low bandwidth, there are facilities for delegated administration and server farms can be much larger, with 1,000 servers now a possibility. Licensing has been changed to on-demand, with just one licensing file for the whole infrastructure rather than the old confusing base license and multiple upgrades model.

Conference Manager 3.0 allows fun and games with two way shadowing, although it is now somewhat overshadowed by the more flexible GoToMeeting product.

Password Manager just moved to release 2.5 in May 2004, although it is still not being adopted as much as Citrix would like. For true security, it must be integrated with a smart card, token or biometrics as there is the inherent danger that if someone gives away their single password, then all the multiple layers of 128 bit encryption are bypassed by human frailty.

Secure Access Manager, on release 2.2 now allows the use of existing portal technology as well as the Citrix Access Centre. It also encrypts MAPI meaning that server based email can at last be sychronised with a local client without using ICA. Unfortunately, this feature only applies to win32 clients. Outlook on an iPAQ still using clunky panning and scaling and a BlackBerry maybe a better bet. µ