Citrix Summit for Citrix partners wrapped up in Anaheim with much news and excitement.  While there were many outstanding announcements some of them are still NDA.  That being said and after reviewing the list of announcement these are the ones I am most excited about today.

Citrix Summit

Citrix Acquires Unidesk!

This news was more than exciting to me.  Until now there were challenges that were often difficult to overcome with traditional Citrix application deployment that often prolonged how long it would take to apply windows updates, applications, and application updates. Leaving some applications needing to be manually installed due to complexity, and slow processes for applying updates.

Citrix has also spent some time with their own application layering offerings in the past, but some of the third party options available did a much better job.  This brings us to today and why Citrix likely decided on purchasing a proven technology option, and the purchase of Unidesk.

Now, I personally have done some work with Unidesk in the past.  From the analysis and testing that I have done with the Unidesk technology it is understandable as to why Citrix took notice.

The layering of applications on the Operating System simplifies the overall deployment, and they are working hard to add this to your licensing by the end of Q1 of this year.   Read the full press release here and more information from fellow CTP Bas van Kaam here.

Cisco Hyperflex VDI Announcement

Citrix and Cisco are partnering on a hyperconverged VDI solution.  Now I always found it interesting that Cisco has moved into the server and storage space, but they have proven that they are a viable choice for enterprise server solutions.  Making the Cisco UCS solutions the preferred server option for many organizations today.  To me, here is where things get more interesting.  There are now several hyperconverged platforms that are leading the way, so time will tell us how this solution will compete and provide value in a space where there are already some very strong players.

Citrix Partners and Announcements

Overall the announcements from this past week show Citrix is forward thinking, and innovative.  As I mentioned there were other news highlights shared, so this next portion of this write-up is for the inquiring mind looking to do their own research.

Other News

Check out these other topics from the media stream.

Citrix to Become Redbull Racing Partner

Citrix Ready HCI Workspace Appliance Initiative

Citrix Xenapp on Microsoft Azure Cost Calculator

What’s New at Citrix Summit

Non NDA.  What’s New from Citrix Summit

Learn more about Citrix technologies here!