{"id":14847,"date":"2015-05-28T15:31:24","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T15:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.greenpages.com\/?p=5182"},"modified":"2015-05-28T15:31:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T15:31:24","slug":"citrix-synergy-2015-recap-top-news-announcements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/citrix-synergy-2015-recap-top-news-announcements\/","title":{"rendered":"Citrix Synergy 2015 Recap: Top News & Announcements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week was the annual Citrix Synergy event in Orlando Florida.\u00a0This year was a little different with Citrix offering instructor-led learning labs prior to the start of the conference on Sunday and Monday.\u00a0 I opted to attend three on Monday, each of them being about \u00a0three hours in length and very interesting. The labs I attended included: <\/span><\/p>\n

\"citrix<\/a><\/p>\n

SYN622<\/strong> \u2013 XenApp and XenDesktop design workshop \u2013 This workshop grouped teams together to review a design and to find the mistakes.\u00a0This was a great way to meet people from different backgrounds and apply various skillsets to the design.\u00a0 Afterwards, the Citrix consultants provided their recommendations.<\/p>\n

SYN616<\/strong> \u2013 Accelerate your NetScaler skills \u2013 This session provided overviews on new advanced features deployment scenarios, including GSLB, Clustering, AAA and Content Switching.<\/p>\n

SYN623<\/strong>: This lab focused on how the new Citrix Workspace Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) service is used to deploy and manage Citrix infrastructure.\u00a0 CLM provides SaaS based services to\u00a0perform blueprinting, automation and management for the design and deployment of enterprise workloads.\u00a0 Citrix has really extended the capabilities of the hybrid cloud.\u00a0More to come on this later in the summary\u2026<\/p>\n

Keynote Tuesday May 12th<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n

The day kicked off with Citrix CEO Mark Templeton<\/a>.\u00a0 Mark said this year\u2019s event was the largest attendance ever (in person and online). Mark began with a discussion on his favorite rock bank, The Moody Blues<\/a>,<\/u> and the Software Defined Workplace<\/a>!\u00a0The concept of the Software Defined Workplace suggests that work is no longer a place; it is something you do anywhere the inspiration strikes.<\/p>\n

Then, Mark talked about why we all love XenApp, and everyone got a drawstring backpack that said,\u00a0\u201cwe love XenApp.\u201d\u00a0 This reinforced the continued emphasis on traditional XenApp.\u00a0 We heard a lot of this at the Citrix Summit Partner event in January this year.<\/p>\n

Next, Mark showed off script demos\u00a0of the new X1 mouse that didn\u2019t go well.\u00a0 I think this was related to a room full of Bluetooth devices.\u00a0 We also saw Mark\u2019s Inbox with over 65,000 unread emails!\u00a0 He said he has someone that manages his inbox; I can\u2019t imagine dealing with that much email.<\/p>\n

Some key announcements from Day 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Citrix is going to extend XenApp 6.5 lifecycle support until 2017.\u00a0 Also announced was Feature Pack 3 for XenApp. This is expected to be out very soon and will include support for Receiver .Next, Storefront 3, profile management enhancements, \u00a0support for Citrix Director for help desk troubleshooting, and some improvements in the Lync optimization pack.<\/p>\n

There was also an announcement of support for a Linux VDA, supporting both Red Hat and SUSE for XenDesktop.\u00a0 These Linux virtual desktops are targeted at high performance Linux applications.\u00a0 This will integrate directly within the existing XenDesktop toolsets.<\/p>\n

HDX FramHawk will be directly integrated into receiver.\u00a0 This is a technology Citrix acquired and is targeted at very high latency links, such as satellite, cellular and LTE networks.\u00a0 It provides local-like experience over lossy networks!<\/p>\n

XenServer 6.5 Service Pack 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n

XenServer is not going away and some big performance increases are coming.\u00a0 I was sitting with one of my coworkers during this, and he quickly deployed it in his lab!\u00a0 I continued to get text messages throughout the day telling me about the new features and performance and video performance improvements.\u00a0 SP1 has new 64-Bit dom0, nVIDA vGPU scalability enhancements, with up to 96 vGPU sessions per host, new in-memory read-cache, Workload Balancing, big network, and storage performance enhancements.<\/p>\n

Receiver x1 Mouse<\/a> was released, and we all got one as a gift for attending Synergy.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t seen this new mouse, it is pretty cool!\u00a0 The x1 is integrated with Receiver and allows you to use the mouse with an iPhone and iPad.\u00a0 This is important because Apple doesn\u2019t support Bluetooth mice on these devices.\u00a0 This gives you the precision, control, and usability needed for a better user experience.<\/p>\n

XenMobile 10<\/a> is now out and the management stack has been consolidated into an easy-to-deploy virtual appliance.\u00a0 Not only is it much easier to deploy, it\u2019s also simple to make highly available through cloning by using just one tool to configure additional nodes.\u00a0 This also gives administrators a single console to manage (which we have all been asking for).\u00a0 There were also new announcements around Worx apps for Salesforce and WorxTasks.<\/p>\n

Citrix Workspace Cloud<\/strong>.\u00a0 Citrix Workspace Cloud is architecturally similar to ShareFile, in that Citrix provides the control plane allowing you to leverage on-premises cloud infrastructure and public cloud resource infrastructure of your choice.\u00a0 This can provide companies with a SaaS based solution for cloud management.\u00a0 Workspace Cloud has a number of services that make up the solution.<\/p>\n

Lifecycle Management \u2013 see above in one of the instructor lead sessions I attended.\u00a0 This has a simple SaaS based orchestration engine that allows drop and drag capabilities.\u00a0 This is very easy to use, even for first time users.\u00a0 It includes service blueprints, a unified interface for the management and deployment of applications services, service monitoring & alerting, self-healing, auto-scaling, and disaster recovery capabilities in the event of a primary site failure.\u00a0Other features include:<\/p>\n