News shorts from Citrix Synergy Barcelona (October 17-19)

CENTERM Exhibiting Cloud Terminal

CENTERM will exhibit its new desktop cloud terminal B20 and mobile cloud terminal CT Pad2, calling it “…a major step forward as the firm demonstrates its latest technological achievement in System-on-Chip (SoC) and Power-over-Ethernet (POE) after CENTERM made its first foray into the US and European markets when it announced the GM810 cloud terminal at Citrix Synergy San Francisco 2012 in May.”

The GM810 is certified as Citrix HDX Ready and ready to ship now.

CA, Citrix Partner

CA Technologies and Citrix announced that they are partnering to “help enterprises and service providers increase agility and productivity by providing additional management and monitoring capabilities on top of Citrix cloud and desktop virtualization solutions.”

New Mobile Enterprise Solutions

Citrix unveiled the next phase of its strategy to enable the mobile enterprise. With the advent of consumerization, mobility and the cloud, an increasingly mobile workforce is looking for easier ways to work the way they want – with anyone, from any location, on any device. With today’s announcements, Citrix gives customers of all sizes the Power to Say Yes to consumer-inspired mobile workstyles with an expanding portfolio of solutions that give employees the freedom and flexibility they want, combined with the security and control businesses need. Today’s announcements make it easier for companies of all sizes to go mobile – empowering employees to interact securely with any combination of data, apps and devices – then bringing it all together in a seamless, integrated experience for end users.

Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions with Citrix Products

Dell announced new additions and enhancements to its end-to-end cloud client computing portfolio. The solutions, which are specific to Citrix-based IT environments and now available in the US and Europe, are “…easy to select, deploy, and support, and deliver a cost effective and highly secure user experience to any device anywhere.”

Dell unveiled new vStart for VDI Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 reference architectures. Available in two configurations, vStart for VDI 50 and vStart for VDI 1000 are pre-engineered, pre-built and pre-integrated converged solutions that include Dell’s PowerEdge servers, EqalLogic or Compellent storage, PowerConnect or Force10 networking, Dell Wyse T10, Dell Wyse Xenith Pro and now Dell Wyse Xenith 2 thin- and zero-clients and management plug-ins. These VDI infrastructure solutions leverage XenDesktop and help organizations achieve benefits of desktop virtualization in a rapid, highly secure manner.

Dell is also updating its DVS Simplified Appliance this month to specifically address the cost and complexity challenges of virtual desktop adoption with new flexible server form factors, support for new hypervisors and additional new capabilities.

Citrix outlines strategy

Citrix unveiled the next stage of its strategy to help enterprises and service providers of all sizes deliver business-ready cloud services. Citrix revealed that Project Avalon will be delivered in two releases – code named Excalibur and Merlin.

The Excalibur release, available this quarter as a tech preview, will feature “…advancements in simplicity, scalability and rich multi-media services needed to deliver Windows apps and desktops to millions of new consumer style mobile devices. Excalibur will dramatically simplify the management of virtual apps and desktops, giving Citrix XenApp® and Citrix XenDesktop® customers a single unified way to design and deliver any mix of virtual applications and desktops from a common management console, and deliver them to end users with any mix of virtual delivery technologies.”

The Merlin release, available as a tech preview in the first half of next year, will “…bring cloud-style orchestration, self-service and deployment flexibility to XenApp and XenDesktop by integrating proven technology from products like Citrix CloudPlatform™ and Cloud Portal™. As a result, customers will be able to rapidly deploy personalized Windows apps and desktops in a flexible, private cloud environment across single or multiple sites, and utilize public clouds in a “capacity on demand” fashion to support fluctuating business needs.”