Citrix Unveils XenDesktop

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, gave a sneak peek at its highly anticipated Citrix XenDesktop product line this week and revealed that it will officially begin shipping to customers worldwide at the upcoming Citrix Synergy™ 2008 event on May 20 (www.citrixsynergy.com).

XenDesktop, which will be co-marketed with Microsoft (see related announcement http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1297129), is a groundbreaking new desktop delivery solution that allows companies to virtualize Windows desktops in the datacenter and deliver them on-demand to office workers in any location. Unlike first-generation virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technologies, XenDesktop is a comprehensive end-to-end desktop delivery system that offers an unparalleled end-user experience, dramatically simplifies desktop management and reduces the cost of traditional desktop computing by up to 40 percent1.

Deploying and managing traditional desktops across thousands of PCs in a typical distributed enterprise represents one of the most time consuming and expensive operations supported by IT organizations today. According to industry estimates, managing a typical end-user desktop can now cost over $5,000 a year per employee, an investment level that is coming under increasing scrutiny in many companies around the world. Unfortunately, this extraordinarily high level of investment still cannot keep pace with the rapid increase in application conflicts and corruptions that degrade user performance, reduce employee productivity and increase the risk of data loss and security exposure.

Simply Moving the Problem is Not a Solution
Desktop virtualization, as a technology, provides an important first step by centralizing desktops and hosting them on a virtual machine infrastructure in the datacenter, then delivering them to end users over the network using a virtual delivery protocol. This centralization makes it far easier to secure user data and control desktop access for thousands of users across a distributed enterprise.

Simply shifting desktop images from endpoints into the datacenter, however, does nothing to solve fundamental desktop lifecycle management issues like image provisioning, monitoring and update management. First-generation desktop virtualization solutions, in fact, often make the problem worse. Instead of PC sprawl, IT departments suddenly have to contend with virtual desktop “image sprawl” in the datacenter, a problem that can balloon datacenter storage and negatively impact green computing initiatives. Standalone desktop virtualization products can also have a substantially negative impact on end-user experience, often degrading performance to the point where virtual desktops become almost unusable.“Desktop virtualization has shown some promise in addressing key challenges with traditional desktop deployment. However, the limitations of existing technologies do not yet sufficiently address the myriad amount of challenges associated with a server-based desktop infrastructure,” said Michael Rose, associate research analyst, IDC. “As this market continues to emerge, new technology must more adequately address user experience, and provide the ability to scale beyond a few hundred users. An effective desktop delivery solution must merge scalability, lifecycle management and superior user experience in order to be broadly applicable in the enterprise.”

Citrix Systems Inc.