by
Brian Madden
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Citrix's Product Manager for Presentation Server, Sumit Dhawan, a few weeks ago at iForum. Sumit is responsible for (MetaFrame) Presentation Server for Citrix. In this 30-minute interview, Sumit and I discussed several topics, including:
- The future of Presentation Server
- Project Constellation - what it is and isn't
- How Presentation Server will add value to Longhorn Terminal Services
- Performance enhancement of Presentation Server over the years
Note: The statistics that Sumit quoted on performance improvements with drive mapping or logon speeds are not currently backed by any public benchmarking results and were used only for the purpose of illustrating his point.
Other topics covered in this interview
- Project IRIS Policy-based session recording
- User experience-based load management (autonomic load balancing), which is about guaranteeing the best user experience
- System health monitoring, enhancing the availability of the system and making sure systems are there when you need them
- How Citrix is addressing the many "black hole problems
- Citrix's five nines 24/7 goals
- Enhancing monitoring of user experience
- How Citrix and Ocelot will deal with 3D applications on Citrix
- Agressive compression / intelligent compression - how this works (with a rotating image example)
- Using graphics processors on citrix
- Project Ocelot will include technologies to leverage graphics processors on the servers.
- WinFX remoting is another platform that can be handled like 3D / OpenGL apps. So is DirectX
- Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 user enhancements - Printing, logon speed (50% improvement), client drive enhancements
- A bit about how client drive mapping file handle calls work
- The future of Citrix Presentation Server with Longhorn and Bear Paw
- Overall, Longhorn Terminal Server will bring more customers into the fold, which will be good for Citrix
- Citrix can handle the more complex environments, and you must measure complexity not just by size. There is application level complexity (large footprint, difficult installs, etc.) network level complexity (WAN, etc.), and user complexities (mobile users, remote users, devices, availability vs. access).
- Citrix and Microsoft are working together. In fact, Citrix is actually helping Microsoft develop some of the Longhorn Terminal Server features.
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