Microsoft uses Citrix Presentation Server to provide web-based test drives of Office 2003

Written on Nov 29 2005 11,230 views, 9 comments

by Brian Madden

If you want a quick way to help you explain Citrix to someone (spouse, parent, etc.), then pop on over to Microsoft.com’s Office site and take a “test drive” of Office 2003, because Microsoft is using Citrix Presentation Server to give web visitors full access to the entire Office 2003 suite. (Citrix used to do something like this with their “demo room” years ago, but now their demo room is nothing more than a collection of videos showing someone else using the products.)

You can access the test drive directly from the Office Homepage (office.microsoft.com). Look for the “Test-drive Office, no download required” links.

It’s interesting to see that Microsoft is doing this, especially as talk heats up about Microsoft providing the Office Suite for free to users via the web. Will they use Terminal Server or re-write Office as a web-services and AJAX-based application? (It’s funny because one of the major advantages of using Terminal Services is that you don’t have to rewrite your apps to webify them.)

It’s also cool that Citrix and Microsoft are really engaging with each other outside of the Terminal Server group. The Office product group also greatly benefits from Citrix, and this test drive is just another example of that.

A final thought: Do you think that Microsoft is using an External Connector License for this? ;)

Comments

Guest wrote ?

on Tue, Nov 29 2005 9:50 AM

the thing is hosted by a company that do citrix-based testdrives as their main bizness.
I guess they use an External Connector License ...  or have a kind of deal for avoinding it !
 
btw, following on the buzz, If MS decides to provide office via Citrix PS for free, this would maybe become unfair competition to all of us resellers/distributors/integrators that would still sell pretty much the same thing for the big price, don't you think ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Brian Madden wrote RE: ?

on Tue, Nov 29 2005 10:01 AM

Unfair? Sure.. just like MS entering the antivirus and antispyware market is unfair, and Google offering free web analytics is unfair, and...

Guest wrote Very Interesting

on Tue, Nov 29 2005 2:43 PM

Its nice to see MS finally support one if there own biggest supporters! Wonder if there is anything more to this.

Guest wrote Runaware

on Wed, Nov 30 2005 3:09 AM

It's not just CITRIX doing this.... [link=http: [link=http:

Guest wrote Test Drive is Runaware, not just Citrix

on Wed, Nov 30 2005 8:35 AM

Brian, you should point out that Citrix alone cannot make these demos possible.  This is the technology of http://www.runaware.com/    RunAware is an overly priced (outrageously priced) way to demo software.

Brian Madden wrote RE: Test Drive is Runaware, not just Citrix

on Wed, Nov 30 2005 9:22 AM

Yeah I didn't want to get into all of that. And with VM software and snapshot revisioning, it's becoming easier to do things like this without runaware.
 
Brian

Guest wrote demo is not working

on Wed, Nov 30 2005 3:28 PM

I tried to access the demo and it says click to connect but keeps coming back to that after trying.  I guess something happened to the citrix servers...

Guest wrote How did they do it?

on Fri, Feb 24 2006 11:01 PM

I know it has been a while for this posting, but how did they do it?  Any white papers?

Guest wrote RE: ?

on Wed, Sep 20 2006 9:56 AM

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