This video created a lot of excitement. Personally, I don't understand what the big deal is. There have been ICA clients available for the Blackberry for years, and I don't know anyone who uses them apart from occasional maintenance tasks. But now that the iPhone supports Exchange, and now that the iPhone is so popular that the new workforce will "force" IT to support them, what does this mean for using ICA on the iPhone? Will people actually use iPhones for their jobs, or will this just be a cool party trick?

Citrix's Chris Fleck has blogged extensively about what he calls the "Nirvana" smart phone where he's looking for the perfect device mobile. Could this be the iPhone?

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I'm still waiting to get my hands on these, so hopefully the demo units will be in my lab shortly.  I'll write a more detailed review after my testing.  Make sure you stop by the booth at Synergy (booth #105) and check these out.

Here is the official press release from Wyse this morning

Cheers

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When you read the EULA (normally I don't read that to be honest) of XP embedded, it essentialy says that you can run Windows applications on the XPe platform, BUT only when these apps are single purpose non-bussiness applications, so the Adobe Readers, IE, RDC/ICA clients etc.  (essense of EULA is mentioned on the buttom of this page)

When I speak with TC vendors they say a different story, that you may run (any) Windows application on XPe without any problem.

It's a not technical discussion but a legal discussion!. From legal point of view you are not able to run (virtualized) multipurpose business applications on XP embedded. (Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid), Thinstall, Citrix Application Streaming, or Altiris SVS solutions).

In addition to the XPe legal part of this discussion, Microsoft Application Virtualization may not being used from licencing perspective. MDOP can only being used on 2000, XP (not embbeded) and Vista client platforms.

Cut and Past from the EULA:

Definition of an Embedded System
An "embedded system" is any computer system or computing device that performs a dedicated function or is designed for use with a specific embedded software application. Embedded systems may use a ROM-based operating system or they may use a disk-based system, like a PC. But an embedded system cannot be used as a commercially viable substitute for multipurpose computers or devices.

This limits the use of office automation/personal computing functions (e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, database, network browsing, scheduling, and personal finance) permitted with the particular embedded licensed product.

Windows XP Embedded is licensed for devices that perform Office Automation and Personal Computing Functions only to the extent that the Office Automation and Personal Computing Functions: (i) directly support the operation of, and are an integral part of, the Embedded Application (defined below); and (ii) operate only when used with the Embedded Application (that is, the Office Automation and Personal Computing Functions shall only permit creation, play, display, or communication of content that is directly related to the commercial or industrial processes or tasks that the device is specifically designed to address).

An "Embedded Application" means industry- or task-specific software programs and/or functionality that provide the primary functionality of the device and which offer significant functionality in addition to Windows XP Embedded.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940172.aspx

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We were greeted by a virtual Wes Wasson, standing in a weird pose in a recorded presentation from Second Life. Apparently, Citrix is spending time exploring potential uses for application delivery and collaboration inside of virtual (not virtualized) environments like Second Reality. To me it's just creepy, but to my kids it'll probably be normal.

When the real Wes Wasson came out, he presented a look at the virtualization plans for Citrix. The overall message is that Citrix wants to virtualize all layers of the user-application interaction - servers (XenServer and Ardence), applications (Citrix Streaming Server, AIE, Presentation Server), and desktops (XenDesktop, Ardence).

Citrix Online (all the GoTo products), and the NetScaler/Citrix Access Gateway/WANScaler products are also in the gameplan to augment the core data center technologies, all in a huge effort to acheive the dynamic data center that was talked about in yesterday's keynote.

Wes outlined the grand vision (purely a vision at this point) as Netscalers on the front end being able to leverage all this new technology to tell the system to automatically provision servers on the backend based on frontend demand. That means that the infrastructure itself will be able to provide the communication, servers, applications, AND the endpoint as needed on a per users basis, in real time. Now that is cool.

Mike Neil, GM Virtualzion, Microsoft took the stage to speak about Microsoft's virtualization efforts, and left us with a few good bits of information:

• System Center will be Virtual Machine Manager for Viridian
• The goal is to "Support heterogeneity across the data center" via the "OSP (Open Specification Promise)."

Basically, this OSP is an effort by Microsoft to provide API hooks into the Viridian hypervisor, called "hypercalls". To me, this is really the crux of the whole XenSource acquisition. We'll get into this a little deeper in the next week, but the short version is this:

Have you wondered why Citrix bought XenSource, specifically? Regardless of price, they didn't even by an actual hypervisor - just the tools to manage it as an enterprise application. This new hypercall API set is the answer - XenSource tools now have the hooks required to manage Microsoft Viridian virtual machines. Not only have they standardized on the VHD disk image format - now even the enterprise management tools will work with each other. This is a big deal, but it's bigger than this article. We'll take a more in depth look at it in the very near future.

Next, Peter Levine, the former CEO of XenSource and new GM of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix took the stage to give a brief ten minute overview of XenSource, claiming 10:1 server density at 70% utlization. This is probably another one of the highly debateable numbers, and you guys can have at in the comments, but we might have to wait until it all comes together to see what the numbers really are.

Peter also talked about bringing the industry partners and standards together, including Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, AMD, Intel, Symantec, NEC, and NetApp. I only mention this because there's one big name missing - VMware. Not that I expect everyone to play nice all the time, but they did say "standards." Hopefully there can be some integration with VMware in the future, as Tim Mangan mentioned in his blog post yesterday.

Gordon Payne, SVP Delivery Services Division for Citrix came on stage to talk about a cable company style of application delivery. This includes a set top box that Citrix has coined the "Application Receiver," and a method of provisioning and delivering applications much like a cable or satellite company would provision and deliver new channels.

Next, Gordon and Aaron Cockerill put on a demonstration of the new XenDesktop, which we learned yesterday has replaced Citrix Desktop Server. XenDesktop is actually a combination of three separate products -- Ardence, XenServer, and Citrix Desktop Server -- bundled into one licensing scheme.

The way the demo went down didn't look like that big of a deal - it was really just showing off a simple VDI scenario where a virtual machine was provisioned for a user in the Xen management console, then assigned to the user in the Access Management Console, then accessed from a thin client terminal. In fact, Ardence wasn't used at all in the demonstration (or, if it was, kudos to Citrix because we didn't notice).

Note 10/24 14:30: To be fair, I do remember now that they mentioned that the VM's could be built using the same image, and that profiles would be applied to make it tailored to each specific user.  My point is that I don't feel the demo did a fantastic job of conveying the capabilities and coolness of XenDesktop. 

What the demo showed is that these products are in the early stages of coming together - geling into the grand vision that Mark T., Wes, Peter, Gordon, and everyone else have been laying out this week.

That's it for the keynote notes from Citrix iForum 07 - The Application Delivery Expo (I'm wearing out those keys). We have TONS of things to write about in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

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