A conversation with Brad Pedersen, Citrix's Chief Architect, about the technical history of Presentation Server, 1989-Present

Written on Dec 14 2006 Filed under: Citrix HDX, Citrix 22,228 views, 8 comments

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by Brian Madden

Last week I wrote that I would be visiting Citrix's headquarters in Ft. Lauderdale to record podcasts with several folks. I recorded nine separate interviews that I'll be releasing as Brian Madden Live! podcasts over the next few weeks.

The first interview from that trip is with Brad Pedersen, one of the earliest Citrix employees from 1989 and Citrix's Chief Architect. In this podcast, Brad talks about how Presentation Server came to be. He starts with the early days of Ed Iacobucci in Texas and walks through Citrix MultiUser, WinView, WinFrame, and then into MetaFrame and Presentation Server.

This conversation is technical, and Brad talks about what worked and what didn't work, and why Citrix did what they did. He talks about things like adding TCP/IP support, the evolution and creation of the ICA protocol. the creation of the Program Neighborhood service and the evolution to IMA in MetaFrame XP. Brad also talks about why the IMA datastore uses this strange binary blob format, and how they hope to eventually migrate that to a standard relational database.

Comments

Kevin Goodman wrote Brad's Office

on Thu, Dec 14 2006 3:24 PM

Brian,
 
Did you notice all of Brad's patents?  (You can't see it from the picture, but Brad must have 20 patent plaques on the wall of his office.  Each time an employee receives a patent, Citrix buys them a plaque to comemorate it.)
 
There have been times when I have been in Brad's office where I was tempted to disagree with Brad on some technical aspect or another but after looking at that wall I decided against it.
 
Kinda leaves no doubt who the "man" is at Citrix.
 
Kevin
 
 

Brian Madden wrote RE: Brad's Office

on Thu, Dec 14 2006 4:02 PM

Oh yeah... The lobby of the building has about 30 patents displayed in a case, and easily half of them have Brad's name on them. And then you walk into his office and there's another stack of boxes of unopened patent plaques that belong to him--unopened because he doesn't have room to display them!

Brian

Scott Chiara wrote Great PodCast.

on Sun, Dec 17 2006 4:38 PM

Number 1 PodCast,
 
Thanks Brian, and thank you Brad Pedersen for the Citrix history, awesome.
 
I have been waiting years to hear that story.
 
ScottC.
www.thin-world.com
 

Dan Shappir wrote RE: Brad's Office

on Sun, Dec 17 2006 4:49 PM

Kevin,
I seem to recall that you have a few interesting patents as well. Not 20 perhaps, but still, it's what you do with them that counts .
Dan

Ron Oglesby wrote Good guy

on Mon, Dec 18 2006 9:52 PM

I will have to say. I only met him in July for the first time, but he is two things 1: a sharp cat. and 2: a real guy. Brad isn’t an ivory tower propeller head. The discussions we had around technology were practical and based in reality. He is as ready to drink a beer as Brian is, and as quick to talk about technology as he is other things.... I was very impressed. Hope to see more of him in the public.
 
Ron
 
 

Brad Pedersen wrote Errata

on Tue, Dec 19 2006 12:45 PM

I listened to the Podcast for the first time last night. Overall I think most of everything I said was accurate, but I did identify one error that I would like to correct.  In the Podcast I said that Barry Davis was part of the Citrix team that negotiated the Microsoft license to Citrix’s NT multi-user changes.   It was actually Barry Dockswell.  Barry was our chief negotiator and he was instrumental in getting the license agreement with Microsoft signed.  Without Barry there would be no Citrix today.
 
I want to thank Brian again for the opportunity to talk about Citrix’s history.  I had a lot of fun doing it.
 
-Brad

Guest wrote [Deleted]

on Sat, Jan 6 2007 6:04 AM

Guest wrote [Deleted]

on Sat, Jan 6 2007 7:49 AM

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