Hey folks,

Citrix has released the videos recorded at the sessions from Citrix Synergy 2010 in San Francisco. I must say i was very impressed with the few videos i have had the time to see so far, very professional editing, a pleasure to see, almost as well as being there, and really a good alternative to attending more than one session at a time

All the sessions can be found here: http://www.citrix.com/tv/#channels/Synergy+2010

Categorized here:

·         Desktop Virtualization
·         Datacenter and Cloud
·         IT Business and Strategy

To those who did not get into the session Jacob and I did on “supporting Macs and iPhones in a corporate infrastructure” or did not go to Synergy it can be found here: http://www.citrix.com/tv/#videos/2284

René Vester

New job with Conecto A/S

So as some of you may know, a couple of weeks back i changed from my former employer to a new company Conecto A/S. I moved to Conecto to join a few others like me in a dream to build the best Citrix Technology Consultant business, first in Denmark and later … the world ofcourse
This in no way means i am not still focused on what goes on with VMware and especially Microsoft. It just means that from a consulting and implementation viewpoint i will be working deeply with Citrix Technologies and focusing more on features, architecture and analysis on the other products. This is simply done because i must admit it is impossible to be an expert within all three major virtualization vendors, so i have chosen to work with features, technologies and analysis on all the three major vendors and focus my implementation specialization on Citrix technologies. If i come across cases which fit better with another vendor there are highly skilled people out there to refer to.

So what..

So, what does this change have to do with the BlackBerry Receiver?.. Well for a long time Conecto has been a leading implementer of BlackBerry solutions in Denmark, and highly specialized in optimizing Citrix ICA traffic for thin connections like GPRS and 3G. This has positioned Conecto as a strong and experienced mobility partner. This fact mixed with the more recent focus on becoming the most specialized and competent Citrix Partner gives great synergies, i think a lot of us tried out the Citrix Receiver for the iPhone, i am loving the Citrix Receiver for iPad, with its more usable screen features. And ever since i started with Conecto i have grown more and more fond of my BlackBerry device, not because it has a huge appstore, or touch screen, or any of that stuff i love in the iPhone, but because it works.. it makes sure my emails are always synced, my contacts and gives me access to internal company ressources. So in short i have grown very fond of BlackBerry when it comes to productivity, work stuff(when it comes to looking cool and trendy, the BB sure does not keep up with Apple, perhaps they should work together?). 

And now.. Citrix announced the release of their BlackBerry Citrix Receiver, and i have to say it looks great, i wanted to share a few screenshots with you all which i made on my BB device this morning:

First we have the new Citrix icon in the BlackBerry Menu, and after configuring my CitrixCloud account i was presented with the Citrix Application list on the right.

Next we can see i choose to add the Microsoft PowerPoint application to my favorite applications, i will get back to why. And last but not least the information showing supported systems, in this case XenApp and XenDesktop.

Sadly i was unable to take screenshots after launching the application, but i have to say it works splendidly, perhaps even better than the iPhone receiver with the Zoom features and then the TrackBall/Pad for Mouse control. The mouse interaction is alot more natural than we have it in the iPhone receiver.

So.. what apps work?

Marketing answer is .. ALL APPS! .. all windows apps on the blackberry dream come true! ..  the real answer is the same as with the iPhone and Windows Mobile receiver.. all applications which can be navigated easily without use of shortcut-keys and a minimum need for zooming in and out. And the Perfect applications?.. applications designed for the End-point device screen. SoftwareFX announced an interesting thing at Citrix Synergy. They announced XenApp Gadgets i wrote more about this here. In short this solution allows for manufacturing of applications designed for a specific endpoint, and then easily integrating with backend databases etc. This gives the user in the far end the best experience and the information needed in the right format. But i chose to add Powerpoint as a favorite, because in presentation mode, that is actually usable to show something to a customer or colleague. Easy navigation from slide to slide, and great visualization using slides. So a good fit as well.

So whats included now?

Tim Graf was kind enough to put out a blogpost with detailed information and these are the features:

• Favorites Apps
• Multiple farm support
• Zoom Control
• Pan/Scroll/Cursor movement
• Enterprise access using BES
• Support for 3G as well as WLAN
• Auto configuration of receiver by Email
• Supports touch capabilities including Gesture support
• Support for XenApp Cache, Delaware and Parra releases
• Support for XenDesktop 4.0
• Capability to reconnect to any XA/XD Session created from any device

Also linking to this introductory video: http://www.citrix.com/tv/#videos/2280

To download the Client look here(accessing this URL from your BB Device should prompt install): http://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=1865165&productId=1689163

Rene Vester

It was great to see all the great guys again, and ofcourse we had a lot of great discussions and debate during the day, it is great to be in a crowd where everyone wants to share their views on technology and strategy, giving a wide range of topics for discussion.

It is ofcourse all under NDA, but i think i wont get shot if i just say that there is a lot of cool stuff under way, some which most likely will be announced this wednesday/thursday at Synergy keynotes, and some may be for Synergy in Berlin later this year.

So today for me it is Citrix Summit time, the Citrix Partner event and that is also under NDA, luckily though this afternoon kicks off Citrix GeekSpeak. First with a couple of Citrix GeekSpeak Live! sessions and then follow up sessions in the Expo hall in a more relaxed form, Citrix GeekSpeak Easy.

i wrote more about GeekSpeak here.

You can see more about the GeekSpeak this year here: http://www.citrixsynergy.com/agenda/geekspeaklive.html

/René Vester

So i have arrived in San Francisco, and i am not waiting for it all to begin! Citrix Summit and Synergy are very important events for me, and i am thrilled to be here.

One cool thing i want to bring to your attention is the fact that GeekSpeak is heavily available with this years Citrix Synergy. I like GeekSpeak and the format of being unfiltered sessions delivered by the most passionate to anyone who will listen.

GeekSpeak is available in 3 shapes this time:

• Geek Speak Tonight: The fan favorite that we ran at Synergy 09 returns, where a combination of Citrix Technology Professionals (CTPs) and CTOs lead discussions and debates on pre-determined topics, and the audience takes center stage and joins the conversation! This event will kick off Synergy on Tuesday, May 11 at 4:30 – 6:45 p.m., giving you a chance to begin the conference with a breath of fresh, unfiltered air. Refreshments will be served. Get there early to claim your seat!

• Geek Speak Track: Not your typical formal breakouts! These sessions are complete with open, unfiltered discussion on a variety of technical topics led by CTPs, Citrix CTOs, and other respected industry thought leaders. Held May 12-14 alongside the formal breakout sessions.

• Geek Speakeasy: Geek Speak Live! comes to the Solutions Expo Hall with a relaxed lounge format for conversational sessions, and a lab format for "bring your own laptop" sessions with industry leaders and technical experts from the community. So grab a snack and head over to the Geek Speakeasy for an action-packed set of sessions from May 11-13!

And the invitation was laid out by Laura Whalen like this:

Are you:

• Tired of dark, stuffy conference rooms where you can hear a pin drop?
• Interested in desktop virtualization, client hypervisors & cloud computing?
• Looking for uncut, unfiltered, and unprecedented discussion and debate?

Do you:

• Want to speak your technically focused mind, and all you need is a stage?
• Enjoy mixing it up with master discussionists of the IT universe?
• Write you name in binary code for fun & watch "The Matrix" for the 5th+ time, just because it’s on?

Time for GeekSpeak?

I for one will be there as much as i can.. its usually great, so if you are at Synergy og Summit, do go join the GeekSpeak sessions

For more information have a look at Laura Whalens blogpost here: http://community.citrix.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=141099044

Rene Vester

And guess what.. my long time favorite 2-factor security solution is named as one of the finalists! Thats right SMS PASSCODE a danish security innovator is a finalist in this years Solution of the year, and the winner will be announced at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco next week. It is a very nice line-up for this years final and all the finalists have done great innovaton around the Citrix technologies.’

The finalists are:

I will not make myself judge on who diserves it the most, but i have to say it is one of the best finals i have seen, most in very different areas. I cant wait to see the winner revealed … and i do hope we get an award home to Denmark

You can read more about the finalists on Vicky’s blog here: http://community.citrix.com/blogs/citrite/vickyp

/René Vester

So.. Citrix has in many ways done a lot to better accomodate how customers would like the licenses to be, for the licenses to better support how businesses work, how other vendors license their products and so on.

However it has given a few hiccups in the systems that lies behind. One of these problems is the “invalid host” error when allocating new licenses.

The cause of this problem is that the licenses we are receiving are now bound to different products, so not all licenses can be allocated to the normal Citrix license-server and therefor when we try to allocate our licenses we get the “invalid host” error.. not very descriptive, but there there is a workaround available.

The issue typically looks like this:

Resolution (as pr. http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx120645)

1. Log on to My Citrix.
2. Highlight Choose a toolbox and select Activation System/Manage Licenses from the list.
3. From the current tool dropdown list, select View Licenses.
4. Next to the unallocated license you wish to allocate, click on the link Click to allocate.
5. Follow the prompts to allocate the license.
6. When prompted to Select Licenses to Allocate, highlight one product, such as "XenApp Platinum" and click on Filter products. Only XenApp Platinum should be appearing now. <<—very important to filter
7. Enter the quantity to allocate, enter the Hostname of the license server and, at the bottom of the page, select Allocate.
8. Download the license file.
9. Repeat steps 1 through 8 for the remaining products.
Note: In case you own WANScaler hardware appliances, you must allocate the WANScaler Client licenses to the Host ID of your hardware appliance (you can find the Host ID on your WANScaler under system tools). In case, you do not own WANScaler hardware appliances yet, there is no need to allocate the WANScaler Client licenses.

This product is known and mentioned for XenApp in the above mentioned support article, however i have now heard about the same issue with quite a lot of the customers who upgraded to XenDesktop Platinum from their XenApp. So the issue also exists with XenDesktop licenses.

/Rene Vester

As some of you may know i am giving a presentation with a good friend Jacob Berg at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco. I previously wrote about it here.

So.. i was thrilled to see that Chris Fleck did a blog post about one of the many Citrix Ready Partners which has come up with something i think might be good news for all the people who wants to deliver their company information to mobile devices.

Chris writes:

“If you want to provide great looking mobile apps for your organization you probably have already faced a number of issues. A sample of these may include:
  1. The company only supports Blackberry , but the employees want iPhones and Androids.
  2. The apps work on XenApp but they don’t look great on a Mobile.
  3. Requirement to control access to apps, data, and users just like with XenApp.
  4. Multiple app development platform expertise required like Objective C, Blackberry JDE, etc

If any of these or other obstacles have prevented you from delivering Mobile Apps to your users you should check out PowerGadgets Mobile for XenApp. Our Citrix-Ready partner SoftwareFX has developed a great WYSIWYG tool for building great looking mobile apps. The only input required is a database query ( SQL, Access, Oracle, etc ) or a Web Service or a Powershell command. The rest is click, drag and drop.”

Read the full blog post here: http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2010/04/23/Sneak+Peak+at+PowerGadgets+for+XenApp%2C+a+WYSIWYG+Mobile+App+Creator

The software is build by SoftwareFX, you can visit them at www.softwarefx.com

For me this supports what Jacob Berg and I will be presenting in a great way, as it is a challenge faced by a lot of organisations.. the users want to work in the way THEY feel comfortable, not always in the way the organisations would like it to be.

A better way to deliver information to non-specific devices like with Citrix Receiver for mobile devices, really make sense, if you can get your apps to fit the device they are targetted for.

I really hope i have time to build a small demo and app to show as part of the Breakout session.. we will see if time allows

/Rene Vester

So the time for Citrix Synergy is drawing closer day by day, and normally i would be well prepared, having my shoppinglist made out and my hotel booked.

This time however i have the pleasure of presenting, and i am very much looking forward to that. We are just now finishing up on second presentation draft, and i think it is going to be, like Tony would say, Greeeeeeeaat!

I have the pleasure of Co-presenting with a good friend Jacob Berg in a session about Macs and iPhone in the corporate infrastructure. To me it is a topic which often comes up when discussing future solution architecture. A lot of our users have grown happy with the Apple way of doing things, some starting from the graphical industry, others just falling in love with the iPod ..

Our session will be: SYN321- Supporting Macs and iPhones in your corporate infrastructure

Session Description:
Mac computers and iPhones are getting more and more popular among the users of corporate IT infrastructure. BYOC concepts are introducing more Mac’s into "no-Mac" companies. With the introduction of more operating system platforms, IT organizations face new challenges to handle these non-Windows user devices. In this session we will layout the options with live demonstrations of Mac/Citrix use cases to show how this new type of user device can be incorporated into existing or planned Citrix infrastructure.
In this session you will learn:
• How Citrix technologies complement the Mac and the iPhone
• How to get the most out of Citrix on Mac/iPhone
• Best practices on how to implement Citrix solutions on Mac

So.. that is going to be fun i think, and hopefully you will join us

Aside from that i have been given the great pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on cloud at the GeekSpeak Tonight! event more info here: GeekSpeak Tonight! for me the GeekSpeak atmosphere is always a blast, unfiltered discussions.. its what we all need

And last but not least i have the pleasure of presenting in the Expo-Area in the GeekSpeak Easy lounge with Alexander Ervik a good friend and fellow CTP from norway. We will take you through “The essentials to a virtual datacenter”, but more on that when you get to San Francisco

Hope to see you there!

/René

Its a great day, welcome aboard to all the new CTP’s. The additions to the program are as follows:

Desktop Focused CTPs:

Carl Webster
Denis Gundarev
Gabe Knuth
Simon Bramfitt
Tim Mangan

Datacenter & Cloud Focused CTP:

Alessandro Perilli

Network Focused CTPs:

John Smith
Joseph Melika
Rick Rohne
Robert Morris
Timco Hazelaa

you can find more information about the program here:

http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2010/04/21/Meet+Our+Newest+Citrix+Technology+Professionals+%28CTPs%29

/René

So i have been away for a while, sometimes things creep up on you and steal your time.. sometimes more important things just come up.. hard to imagine, i know..

Anyways.. i have not been blogging lately and even my participation in the forums have fallen to a nonexistant level, and ofcourse i chose to blame my son 100%.. but what i started thinking about the other day was, how lucky i am to actually miss this, there has been times where i wondered if i blogged for myself or for everyone else, so the last few months spend getting to know my son, surely told me it has been just as much for myself as anyone else. No doubt an extra little guy in the house will take more time, but luckily i have been able to turn my focus back to what i truly love, virtualization technologies and especially Citrix which naturally has a special place with me.

I will be working with Citrix more focused looking ahead and i am looking forward to share my experiences with you all.

The Danish Citrix User Group is just now planning the next Meetup, and shortly there will be news and information available on www.dkcug.dk

Just as importantly, the preparation for Grand Pubforum Frankfurt 2010 is under way and it looks great so far, i truly believe this might end up being the best Pubforum ever. It is being held in the hometown of the Father of Pubforum, Alex Juschin, and information will be released to www.pubforum.net as it is finalized, book the flights now.

Citrix User Group Norway is also in the middle of preparations for their spring event in Lillestrøm, just outside Oslo, these guys never cease to amaze me, so i am truly looking forward to the finalized agenda! you can keep up to date here: http://cug.no/xenzone/

/René