As usual Citrix Synergy began with a visionary KeyNote signed Citrix CEO, Kirill Tatarinov. Kirill talked about how the world and our way of working change in a rapid pace, we are connected and more mobile as ever before. Figures were presented predicting that by 2020, 75% of all employees are “Digital Natives”, ie. they have worked with digital/ mobile methods for several years and make new demands on opportunities to work where you are. The latter has been a hot topic for a long time, but we think this also suits well with how Citrix predicts the future.
Kirill continued to look at how productivity has evolved in comparison with how IT investments has looked recent years. We got to see how productivity remained stable, while companies´ IT investments are moving more from each year. The fact that these investments have not given back in regards to productivity are obviously startling and something to be taken into consideration with exceptions of course. Citrix survey shows us that companies that sees their IT as a leverage for more business, instead of seeing IT as a single tool, have seen a significantly better development in their staffs’ productivity.
In view of future generations´ demands that was brought up in the introductory paragraph, we believe that IT can be a potential for better work on any device, location or time chosen by the user. Something that symbolizes Citrix´s vision that “work is not just a place”, is defiantly Samsung Dex. Something that Samsung released in connection with the launch of their new flagship, Galaxy s8. The power of a cellphone is so big today so why just use is as a phone, when it also can be used as a thin client. Place the phone in the dock and access a full desktop on an external screen. With the Citrix receiver in your phone you can easily access your desktop. Adding to Google Chromebook is also something very positive for particularly schools. Imagine using XenDesktop being able to work with graphical and demanding applications on a Chromebook. Or why nor Skype for Business on the Chromebook with support for audio and video?
XenApp/ XenDesktop Essentials was introduced last year at Citrix Synergy but the release almost extended to this year´s edition, more specifically this April. XenApp/ XenDesktop Essentials former called Express is a service in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft and Citrix has a close collaboration regarding the development of Azure. Microsoft´s service for applications in Azure “Remote App” has now been exchanged with XenApp/ XenDesktop Essentials. Satya Nadella, Microsoft presented on the first KeyNote this year and talked about how they have upgraded their “Remote App” service to Essentials in April and has today 500 working environments up and running.
At this Citrix Synergy, Citrix continues pushing their profile as a company with focus on security, a hot topic. Their virtualization products have since the start managed their security in central datacenters instead of managing each client being an easier target for virus and theft. At the more technical focused KeyNote Citrix talked about that you cannot longer put your trust in statistically IF/ THEN rules to manage your protection, instead you should work with more context based methods. Now they made the launch of Citrix Analytics, a tool with the ability to learn behaviour and patterns with each user; if you work from the office every day with your Outlook always logged on, then you can detect that something might be wrong if your outlook is logged on at some other place far away. Deviations like this is something that Analytics can assist you with.
That Citrix place a high focus in security cannot be shown more clearly as they did at this Citrix Synergy, inviting General Colin Powel as their inspirational speaker. General Powell gave his point of view regarding cyber threats and described them from his role and his thoughts around modern leadership.
Next generations StoreFront was presented: Citrix Workspace. Now you will have the opportunity to combine several services in your “portal” not just desktop and applications from your own environment for the user also receives a portal for all functions. Through this you also access web, Saas, cloud and mobile applications. This gives the user a better experience with Single Sign On with these functions. A great step forward in self-service which helps the users but also your IT department.
We are well aware of Citrix collaboration with Nvidia, but now they have also started a collaboration with AMD. The new version of XenServer will have support for AMD´s GPU´s. Something that we see is an economical beneficial method because the help with GPU will give you a graphical advance for all XenApp and XenDesktop environments that is not created for heavy 3D applications.
The central focus on Citrix both KeyNotes and what became even more clear is that according to Citrix, the cloud is the place to be. Citrix has previously commented on their transformation info a Cloud first thinking and this the continued on at this Citrix Synergy. They heavily invest in their own Cloud Services, where many new features are launched here before they come to the on prem. version. For XenApp/ XenDesktop, Citrix Cloud can be seen as a control plan for Citrix related infrastructure. To this end, the load that is run on-prem. or in eg. Azure is freealy to combine.
After this year´s edition of Citrix Synergy we can summarize our impressions that Citrix continues to show the path with their vision and tools for you all to work in a modern, secure and mobile way. Remember – Work is not a place!