Citrix Summit 2018

I am writing this on the eve of Citrix Synergy 2018 from a seat on a Southwest flight to Anaheim, CA. The same location as Summit 2018. There is anticipation for what I believe will be a historic Synergy. With Citrix news frozen at the moment before the big Tuesday keynote, it seems like a good time to look back.

Summit 2018 was full of great announcements:

• XenApp Service - announced and subsequently released in Q1 (blog)
• Workspace Services - this is a new offering that packages various solutions (blog). It will be available at three different service levels: 
• Workspace Unified Endpoint Management
• Workspace Advanced
• Workspace Premium (Q1)
• Citrix Workspace Hub was announced (blog)(3 min YouTube video).  This a Raspberry Pi device that is one part low-cost thin client and one part IoT device. One cool new feature is the ability to do dual displays via a second ancillary device (a Raspberry Pi Zero) to drive the second display. Both ViewSonic and nComputing will be selling these devices.
• Secure Browser Service - this service is a great option for an organization that wants to keep internet browsing out of their data centers and endpoint devices (blog). Citrix will host the browser and provide a seamless user experience.
• Citrix Ready HCI Workspace Appliance - Nutanix is the first partner to make the onboarding of a Citrix Services even easier (blog) (Nutanix). 
• XenApp Essentials - announced that Hosted Shared Desktops will now be supported (blog).
• Citrix Analytics Service is announced (blog).  This is an add-on Service to correlate events across users, apps, data, and networks and apply machine learning to uncover actionable insights. While analytics will initially focus on security there are plans to expand insights to user experience and performance. Definitely, one to watch.
• NetScaler SD-WAN - 10.0 announced and support for LTE integrates appliances (blog). 10.0 expands the scale and functionality of the product.
• NetScaler Secure Web Gateway is enhanced- a forward proxy that will integrate with other Services like Secure Browser (blog). 
• NetScaler Gateway Service - now bundled with the XenApp and XenDesktop Service (as in free) and provides HDX proxy. There are more advanced versions of the Service coming. 
• NetScaler Application Delivery Controller - new agentless approach to management using Ansible syntax and REST APIs (NITRO) (Ansible site). 
• NetScaler CPX can now be used as an Ingress device in Kubernetes clusters to load balance north-south traffic to your service (blog). 
• NetScaler MAS - Web Insight and Advanced Analytics using anomaly detection announced. Customize app scoring. A new tool for capacity planning enables visualization of peak application usage.

Ready for the keynote

Throughout the week there was a lot of discussion around the “Secure Digital Perimeter”. Many companies have realized that fortifying the perimeter does not do you any good if none of your users are inside it (aka the trusted network). Citrix takes the approach that users need to be productive both on and off of the trusted network, from any device, using any applications.

The services hosted by Citrix Cloud are growing.  Products that have traditionally been a perpetual license all have a subscription equivalent.  In one of the sessions, they gave an overview of the points of presence for the various services.  It will be interesting to look back at this map in the future as all services are growing and new services are being added all the time.

Citrix Cloud Global Points of Presence

I had the pleasure of being on a panel with @florinlazurca and @emma_k_prz dedicated to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) that will go into effect on May 25th, 2018.  It is my opinion that these regulations will start new conversations on how we collect, process, or protect personal data.  The impact is likely to extend outside of the EU and set a bar for any organization to strive for.

While there were sessions that focused on XenApp and XenDesktop, there was less focus on the flagship products during the keynote. Current Updates (CU) have consistently dropped each quarter for a number of years. These smaller updates are easier to deploy and test but can still deliver big value like the watermark feature in 7.17.

XenDesktop watermarking as seen on a Chromebook. The transparency is can be subtle or not so subtle.

Last but not least, I want to give a shoutout to @crystalricevuto for winning Demo Warrior. Crystal beat out all other employees in an internal contest to come up with and deliver the best demo showcasing Citrix's products.  Anyone who can work in HBO's Game of Thrones into their demo gets my vote!  It was great to see Crystal get recognized on the big stage.

Brian @sagelikebrian

Citrix Summit 2017

Citrix Summit 

is a conference for employees and partners to hear about the newest updates on products and solutions.  It is the better part of a week dedicated to a health mix of learning and networking culminating with a big party on the last night.

I have been going to these conferences for so long that one of the best parts is catching up with old friends.  This Summit was no exception.

Before I even left Denver I saw this ad

Current State

Before we talk about announcements, let me set the stage a bit.  XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 had just been release around Christmas time along with Receiver 4.6, and it was the one year anniversary of the initial LTSR announcement.  XenServer 7.0 had been released the prior March and NetScaler was at firmware 11.0.  Citrix Cloud had been up and running for a little over a year.

The Anaheim Convention Center

Company Announcements

• A new partnership with Red Bull Racing
• New Citrix Ready HCI Workspace Appliance Program
• New XenApp on Azure Cost Calculator
• CEO @KirillTatarinov first anniversary at the helm

Product Announcements

• New XenDesktop Essentials
• New XenApp Essentials
• New XenMobile Service (as in Citrix Cloud hosted)
• Announced XenServer 7.1 which is the first ever LTSR for XenServer
• SD-WAN 9.2 announced (see Tweet below)
• Citrix Lifecycle Management rebranded as Smart Tools
• By far the biggest announcement, Citrix acquires Unidesk for their app layering technology!

.@achauhan "This is what it looks like when NetScalers fly off the shelf." #CitrixSummit pic.twitter.com/Sozy813up1

— Joe Vaccaro (@joevaccaro) January 10, 2017

Maybe one of the more interesting things was the lack of major announcements related to XenApp and XenDesktop.  In part, this is because the products are being updated every quarter if you are traditional on-prem, more frequent if you are using Citrix Cloud.  The speed of innovation was a big part of @cloudappcal keynote presentation.  In years past, I used to list off all the new features coming in the next release.  The number of features that were released in 2016 is shocking and it would be too much work to just list them here.

If you noticed the date of this post and are wondering, "who posts about Summit on the eve of Synergy"?  I guess the answer is me.  Months later I still think that we are going to look back at Summit 2017 and think that it was a major conference and interesting point in time for Citrix.

Citrix Summit 2015

Citrix Summit 

is an annual conference where partners gather to hear the latest technical and sales information.  This year it was held in exciting Las Vegas at the sprawling Venetian conference center.  Coverage of Summit is always tricky because, while it is a partner only event and mostly covered by NDA, there are aspects that are already public.  This article will strive to keep the balance and leave what happened in Vegas--well, safely behind in Vegas.

This year Lewan sent four engineers to take part in the festivities. We came back with our heads full of announcements, product updates, and experience with what is coming next.  It is going to be an exciting year for Citrix customers.

The Announcements

Mark Templeton is back at the helm as CEO.  This is excellent news as the 20 year veteran of Citrix is beloved by both employees and the industry.

Citrix acquires Sanbolic.  Sanbolic allows customer deployments to be geo-distributed across multiple locations and to scale in a linear and predictable manner.  We will have to wait and see what this means for Citrix's product portfolio.

WorkspacePod Powered by HP is announced.  The solution is integrated Citrix infrastructure software with HP's Moonshot platform.  HP considers this integrated compute, storage, networking, plus GPU to be the next step beyond hyper-converged infrastructure and they have labeled it ultra-converged.  Time will tell if this moniker will be adopted by the industry.  A tech preview is expected to be available Q1 of this year.

Product Updates

Workspace Cloud is announced.  Formerly Workspace Services, Workspace Cloud is a revolutionary new way to deliver Windows and mobile apps, data, and desktops.  I say revolutionary because it is clearly a new way of thinking.  I had several discussions over the week with some people hesitant on how this would incorporate in their environment and others who cannot wait for it to be released.  This is by no means a desktop as a service (DaaS) play.  Citrix is very specific with the choice of the word workspace.  To quote Mark T, "the desktop is to the PC-era as Workspace is to the Cloud-era".

XenMobile 10 is announced.  XenMobile 10 represents a big step forward for the product in areas like security (FIPS 140.2) and flexibility.  Our hands-on experience makes us believe the people most excited about this release should be the administrators as significant steps have been made to make this product easier to deploy and use.  Users get updated Worx apps and a new self service portal for tracking, locking, and wiping lost or stolen devices.

XenServer 6.5 is announced.  Major improvements have been made to the hypervisor in the areas of performance.  The new 64-bit kernel architecture has resulted in dramatic improvements in networking and storage performance.  I do not have the numbers in front of me but I remember my jaw dropping in the keynote because some of them had triple digit percentage improvements.  The timing could not be better with the uptick in XenServer deployments in 2014 due to industry leading support of NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology.

Improvements to XenApp and XenDesktop are coming.  Citrix is hard at work improving their flagship products.  Enhancements are coming to Microsoft Lync optimization and session recording will be added to Director.  If the last one sounds a lot like SmartAuditor, it is because I believe it will be replacing that functionality.

XenApp and XenDesktop technology previews are coming.  DesktopPlayer for Windows will be a welcome addition for offline virtual desktop and BYO Windows users.  Linux fans rejoice, a virtual desktop agent is coming.  The most exciting thing I witnessed (at the conference ;) ) was the integration of Framehawk into Citrix's already amazing HDX protocol.  Framehawk is the special sauce that overcomes very challenging network conditions like high latency (often seen in cellular) or packet loss (often seen in poor Wi-Fi).  Check out the pre-Citrix acquisition video from a few years ago below to see why I am excited.




The demo lab is already being prepared to make room for all of this awesome tech.  All of these updates are bound to set the stage for an exciting week in Orlando at Citrix Synergy in May.  For more information, do not hesitate to contact us.