Wow, well as I sit here I still feel as though I am recovering from Citrix Synergy and it ended several days ago, but it was great! The conference was May 6th – May 8th in Anaheim, CA. There was excellent content, networking, vendors, free certification exams which led to a great conference experience. That being said, here are some of the takeways.
Geek Speak
The first evening attendees enjoyed Geek Speak Live. Geek Speak is a great way to kick off the conference and kick back a few beers too. Overall it was laid back and informational covering PVS, MCS, Mobility and all the hot topics Citrix related. While there were so many other standouts, I cannot get this one out of my thoughts. The statement was made that “it is ok to run multiple hypervisors in your datacenter”. I think this statement sends an important message to organizations. It is ok to think “outside the box” and look at ways to cut costs and improve their environments. The reality that is true of just about any of the topics discussed. Keeping an open mind to make the best decisions for your organization is invaluable.
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Keynote
The keynote opened with an iPad band, yes they played their iPads. I will admit there is something to be said about hearing music from real instruments, but I thought this definitely fun. Then Mark Templeton joined the room to the song “Happy” which only elevated the energy in the room. From a technology perspective there were several announcements from Citrix Receiver X1, Citrix Workspace Services, the release of XenMobile 9 and many more that I will not be covering here.
The concept of Citrix Receiver X1 was that we could use once receiver across platforms including MAC. Citrix Workspace Services introduced a partnership with Microsoft where Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop can run on Windows Azure. In talking to some people there skepticism in this space due to the need to understand more about securing data, but personally I am excited about this offering and I think that it has great potential for the future of Citrix technologies. Finally XenMobile9 introduces Windows Phone support, ShareFile connectors to other products such as Dropbox, and the introduction of WorxNotes.
The Conference
The conference itself covered so many different topics it would take me weeks to summarize them all. You could find sessions on Citrix PowerShell, HP Moonshot, GPU’s, mobility, XenApp, XenDesktop, vdisks, Netscaler and more. Also at Lunch time you may have found the Tech Talks and I was honored to lead one of the tables. These talks created a lot of great information, and summaries can be found here in case you missed them. Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. Vendor swag was also everywhere and Citrix had their own booth where you could visit to ask any questions you could possibly have. The learning possibilities were endless.
In summary, Citrix Synergy was amazing and “Whatever you do leave it better than you found it”, Mark Templeton.