Citrix Synergy Keynote 2014 + Day 1

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Published: Wednesday, 07 May 2014

On the 6th of May Citrix Synergy 2014 really started (yesterday the tradtion Geak Speak Live was held) with the keynote of Mark Templeton. Traditionally I wrote down my experiences of the keynote and the other activities of day 1 of Citrix Synergy 2014.

The keynote was started with a band, playing music on IPad. Mark Templeton came on stage on the song Happy and announcing that 10000 people are watching the keynote (5000 in the room, 5000 online) and mentioning a partnership between Citrix, HP and Intel.

Mark started with the ultimate mobile device, which is a beautiful car (Tesla), leading to a Software-defined Workspaces, but actually you are the ultimate mobile device according to Marc.

After that it was time for the Citrix Innovation Award, won by Autodesk. Mark continued about the Citrix Service Provider Program, delivering more than 1,4 million business desktops, followed by a BT success marketing story. Not really interesting, which in which I was not the only one watching the twitter stream.

Next topic was ShareFile, started by the amount of sold licenses and business customers, followed by the API possibilities, ShareFile Storage Zones and the ShareFile architecture. A story about a vault leads to a photos of Mark in his younger years, which finally made it to Mobility. Mark introduces a new word again Moveability with keywords like: Workflow Transformation, Workforce Engagement, Workplace Reinvention organizations join people and a continuum of Mobile Workspace Experience.

Next topic was the Receiver which is available in three flavors: Apps (native experiences/device features), Browser (no download/clientless access) and Appliances. Mark continues with the HTML5 Receiver, developed together with Google. There will be new Receiver for Chrome OS, tech preview in Q3 2014 (printing, USB, clipboard, touch, webcam and 2 way audio). Also there is a lot of work done for the Receiver for Mac, followed by the first demo in the keynote showing GPU Redirection with the Mac Receiver. Receiver X1 allows branding, your templates, HDX/MDX support and much more (check that slide with all the information). Richard Hayton is demoing these new enhancements, especially the new look and feel (looks really good) with the Receiver for Windows and Receiver for IOS including XenMobile technologies.

Also Citrix is using the strategy Cloud First, Mobile First, just like Microsoft is doing. Mark explains how Citrix sees this vision. Don’t Own Stuff (DOS) is back again, also used a few years ago. Now don’t owning devices and services (Produced Anywhere/Enjoy Anywhere). IT is a Workspace Service Provider (apps, infrastructure and services: work anywhere, made anywhere).

We got along story by the CMO guy, which nobody followed actually. The slides were the only impressive thing but did not had a value added-on. But finally there is a Brad Peterson demoing the Worx products including the cool Citrix Online Possibilities like GoToMeeting. This is pretty useful stuff. Also the new WorxNotes is demoed, which is also pretty cool too. Also Network Shares, SharePoint via ShareFile are demoed by Brad. Also again cool. Many improvements in this space, actually those Connectors are really impressive. Next is the WorxDesktop, connecting to home PC or similar and just grab data from it including editing those files. Amazing. Next demos were about Workspace Control actually; don’t know why we need to see a feature that it’s available for years.

After the demo the CMO guy stayed unfortunate talking about XenDesktop and XenApp. Logically it was still marketing blah blah, followed by XenApp demo by Brad again showing a CAD application running. Next was the announcement of the XenApp Migration Tools, techpreview coming soon.

Next was the announcement of XenMobile 9, available in Q2 2014. XenMobile is also available in the cloud as XenMobile Cloud. Next the ShareFile enhancements (personal connectors, SDK, any on-prem) were repeated. Next topic was the announcement of NetScaler 10.5 including the enhancements in this release.

Finally the Citrix Workspace Suite is announced, actually all Citrix products in one bundle including comparative pricing especially for VMware Horizon and View customers (they get a 50% off). Several partners are offering the Citrix Workspace Suite Solutions.

Mark Templeton came back on stage talking about Culture (Employee value) + Empathy (Customer value) is the formula for Citrix success.

Traditionally there is one more thing. Experience First: Gatekeeper to Shopkeeper. This can be done via Citrix Workspace Services build on Microsoft Azure. After a video of Microsoft Mitch Parker came on stage to very interesting demo of Citrix Workspace Services.

More info of the announcements can be found: http://www.citrix.com/news/announcements.html

After the keynote and the lunch I attended SYN614 Instructor Lab: ShareFile Enterprise: Advanced Integrations to XenMobile AppController. The lab is based on both a theoretical part and practical part. Jay Tomlin himself was one of the instructors and started explaining the flow between the client to the ShareFile components based on different scenarios. After that introduction we got the exercise to configure the NetScaler for StorageZone Controller High Availability and Communication. The second step was Chris Anderson explaining the ShareFile StorageZone options, again followed by exercises. The last part was combining FileShare with XenMobile, again some theoretical introduction followed by exercises. In total I found it a good lab and I can really recommend trying to attend those labs.