Citrix unveils end-to-end virtualisation strategy

And the company has launched EasyCall, a communication-enabler that lets users initiate instant click-to-call from any phone number in any application via its corporate phone system. On the virtualisation side, Citrix has added two products – Citrix XenServer for server virtualisation and Citrix XenDesktop for desktop virtualisation. The former is aimed at managing server virtualisation in the data centre – creating a flexible aggregated pool of computing and storage resources. Based on the Xen virtualisation engine, it ranges from the single server Citrix XenServer Express Edition, available for free download, to XenServer Enterprise Edition. As for the desktop virtualisation, Citirx says it’s “designed to overcome the challenges of cost, complexity and user experience that have prevented virtual desktops from becoming a mainstream enterprise reality in the past.” Due for general release in the first half of next year, Citrix XenDesktop will be the industry’s first integrated desktop delivery system, moving beyond the limitations of VDI point solutions to enable secure, fast delivery of Windows desktops to any office worker over any network. The company says that it will combine a desktop delivery controller (based on Citrix Desktop Server with native ICA support), Xen virtualisation infrastructure for hosting any number of virtual desktops, and virtual desktop provisioning to stream a single desktop image on-demand to multiple virtual machines. “Citrix is now positioned to be a key provider of server, desktop and application virtualisation technologies, a market which [analyst] IDC expects to be worth in excess of $3.4 billion by 2011,” says John Humphreys, programme vice-president, IDC. “Citrix’s new end-to-end virtualisation offerings augments the company’s application delivery strategy and represents the foundational components of the future application delivery environment,” he adds. Meanwhile, Citrix’s new EasyCall feature embeds communication capabilities into any enterprise application delivered by Citrix NetScaler or Citrix Presentation Server. Citrix makes the point that most of the efforts aimed at more tightly integrating communications and business applications have been focused on a narrow set of applications or users, often requiring new telecommunications equipment or retrofitting applications to embed communications features. EasyCall, however, automatically embeds communications capabilities into any application as a core property of a company’s application delivery infrastructure. The feature works with any corporate phone system and supports any phone. “The integration of communications and applications should be focused around making technology work for users instead of making users work around technology,” says William Stofega, senior research analyst at IDC. “When communications are a part of the application or application delivery system, users are able to communicate from within the context of the activity or business process in which they are involved.”