Citrix Offers Sneak Peek at Desktop Virtualization Launch

By Michelle Savage

April 15, 2008 —  Citrix Systems introduced its desktop virtualization platform yesterday and will begin shipping to global customers at the upcoming Citrix Synergy 2008 event on May 20.

According to the company, XenDesktop simplifies desktop management, improves data security and addresses the costly challenge of deploying and managing traditional desktops across thousands of PCs.

The company said that industry estimates indicate that managing a typical end-user desktop can now cost more than US$5,000 a year per employee. Even with this investment, it is difficult to keep up with the rapid increase in application conflicts and corruptions that degrade user performance, reduce employee productivity and increase security risk.

Citrix claims that XenDesktop reduces the cost of traditional desktop computing by up to 40 percent by centralizing desktops and hosting them on a virtual machine infrastructure in the data center. It will then deliver them to end users over the network using a virtual delivery protocol.

Citrix will offer three versions of XenDesktop: Standard, Enterprise and Platinum. The Platinum version comes with more advanced management tools, including EdgeSight Monitoring, to monitor how the system performs. Retail pricing will begin at $75 per concurrent user.

XenDesktop also has the ability to run in Microsoft environments; Citrix and Microsoft have a co-marketing agreement regarding XenDesktop.

In a separate announcement, HP said that it will support Citrix XenDesktop upon its availability in May across its industry-standard HP ProLiant server and HP Compaq thin client product lines. According to HP, the addition of XenDesktop support allows for an even more flexible and streamlined architecture for users working from remote locations, and it ensures high-speed application delivery across a virtual infrastructure.



Related Search Term(s): Desktop management, HP, virtualization

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