Citrix Streaming Server is no more

Written on Apr 10 2007 Filed under: Citrix, Application Streaming, Industry Buzz 17,557 views, 4 comments

by Brian Madden

Well, the product is still around. It's just not called "Citrix Streaming Server." Now it's called "The application streaming feature of Citrix Presentation Server 4.5, Enterprise Edition." (How's that for a true-but-misleading title?)

This little gem came to light in an email exchange with one of the Citrix Streaming Server Feature team members Manu Chauhan, one of the guys I interviewed for a Brian Madden Live! show when I visited Ft. Lauderdale last December.

Here's the story: Ruben Spruijt is giving a session at BriForum in a few weeks called "Streaming Smackdown." It's a head-to-head comparison between the Citrix Presentation Server streaming functionality, Microsoft Softgrid, Altiris SVS, and Thinstall. As part of this presentation, Ruben is making this super-cool gigantic feature matrix that shows which products have which features, and he's sharing a draft version of this matrix with each of the vendors to ensure that he doesn't miss anything. (Of course he's not blindly accepting all of the comments that the vendors are making, but he's taking them all into consideration so that he can provide the most accurate yet independent picture to the BriForum attendees.) We'll make this chart available on BrianMadden.com after BriForum as well.

So anyway, as part of this process, Manu shared Citrix's feedback on the draft of the matrix. As part of that, he provided the insight that before Presentation Server 4.5 was released, Citrix were planning on selling the streaming functionality as its own product to be named "Citrix Streaming Server." But since they ultimately decided that the streaming functionality would only be available as part of CPS, it's now just the feature of CPS instead of being called CSS. Make sense?

Comments

Rene Vester wrote no secret

on 04-10-2007 12:32 PM

I dont think this has been kept secret in anyway, every citrix slide i have seen since january has had Presentation Server and Desktop Server as the options and the Platinum edition presentations have all had the Streaming feature mentioned instead of the streaming server.
 
My personal opinion is that is the right move as they in this way have a chance to spread the product to a large customer base and get it to the place they want it to be and have customers use the product. I dont know of many customers who had taken in the product as an independant product with the strong competition from Altiris SVS, MS Softgrid and the many others.
 
This way the product gets to live .. in some form ;)
 
/Rene

Brian Madden wrote RE: no secret

on 04-10-2007 1:06 PM

Oh yeah, I totally 100% agree that this is the right move. I don't have a console in front of me, but doesn't the Citrix MMC still call it CSS?

Brian

Rene Vester wrote RE: no secret

on 04-10-2007 1:28 PM

I believe it does and i do believe any names will stay as CSS the only real change is the changing of the branding.. or the stopping of the branding as CSS and now just moving it to be a benefit of PS SubAdv :-)

I guess the benefits to having SA have been greatly missed so perhaps its a doublehitter for Citrix.. Value for SA and no need to brand a new product in the flood of other new Citrix-Brands ;)

/Rene

Pete Downing wrote Can't wait!

on 04-10-2007 1:56 PM

This topic is extremely interesting and I am extremely interested in what Ruben has to say.  It will be nice to see an unbiased view of this topic.  I am curious Ruben... do you plan to add Appstream into the mix or an Appstream/Alitris SVS combo?  http:
I have never had a chance to play with Thinstall so I can't judge too freely, but so far I am a huge fan of Softgrid.  Appstream is a not too distant second, but a strong candidate if you are not keen on the whole application isolation concept.  Again these are MY opinions!

Look forward to the matrix!

Pete Downing

Guest wrote Cool!

on 04-20-2007 11:24 PM

Very nice!

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