Last year, Citrix revealed that the latest version of its VDI solution, XenDesktop, will be licensed on a per-user / per-device basis rather than the concurrent licensing model Citrix customers have been accustomed to.

To help ease the transition from concurrent licensing, Citrix introduced a Trade-Up promotion that included a 2-for-1 deal for customers that traded up ALL of their existing licensing.

The original Trade-Up program ended on June 30th, 2010. However, Citrix has recently announced an extension to its popular program until Dec 31, 2010.

Learn more about Citrix XenDesktop and calculate your savings

Trade-up to Citrix XenDesktop Now

So Citrix changes names and terminology every so often, right?  OK, that’s the understatement of the century!

From MetaFrame to MetaFrame Presentation Server, to Presentation Server, to XenApp + XenDesktop, to XenDesktop with FlexCast.. whew!  I may have even missed a few

Citrix FlexCast is.. well.. watch the video!

Citrix FlexCast: Overview

Different types of workers across the enterprise need different types of desktops. Some require simplicity and standardization, while others require high performance and personalization.

XenDesktop can meet these requirements in a single solution with its unique FlexCast™ delivery technology.

With FlexCast™, IT can deliver every type of virtual desktop – each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each individual user. There are five delivery options:

FlexCast for Apps: Hosted Shared, Hosted VM, and Streamed

Allows any Windows® application to be centralized and managed in the datacenter, hosted either on multi-user terminal servers or virtual machines, and instantly delivered as a service to physical and virtual desktops. Optimized for each user device, network and location, applications are delivered via a high speed protocol for use while connected or streamed via Citrix application virtualization or Microsoft App-V directly to the endpoint for use when offline.

Local VM

Local VM desktops extend the benefits of centralized, single-instance management to mobile workers that need to use their laptops offline. When they are able to connect to a suitable network, changes to the OS, apps and user data are automatically synchronized with the datacenter.

Streamed VHD

Streamed VHDs leverage the local processing power of rich clients, while providing centralized single-image management of the desktop. This approach offers an easy, low-cost way for customers to get started with desktop virtualization by leveraging existing PC resources and keeping datacenter overhead to a minimum. It can also be ideal for government and university labs that use diskless PCs for maximum data security.

Hosted VDI

Hosted VDI desktops offer a personalized Windows® desktop experience, typically needed by office workers, which can be securely delivered over any network to any device. This option combines the benefits of central management with full user personalization, and can generally support up to 150 desktops per server.

Hosted Shared

Hosted Shared desktops provide a locked down, streamlined and standardized environment with a core set of applications, ideally suited for task workers where personalization is not needed – or allowed. Supporting up to 500 users on a single server, this model offers a significant cost savings over any other virtual desktop technology.

Citrix extended its 2-for-1 trade up promotion until the end of 2010

VDI can be a big pill to swallow. There are many components to it, so we put this together to give you a concise, but full view of VDI in a nutshell. Enjoy!

Learn more about Trading-up to Citrix XenDesktop

Last week UltraLevel posted one of the first Citrix XenDesktop 4 announcements released by Citrix. Nine days and two NDA partner webinars later, we’re convinced that you won’t want to miss the first public XenDesktop 4 webinar for Citrix customers scheduled on October 20th. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but get ready for a few bombshells in regards to major product feature and licensing changes – who, Citrix? They never do that, right?

Seriously though, I think that the changes will yield great benefit in most scenarios. First of all, XenDesktop edges out XenApp as the new Citrix flagship product although it will include “all of the features of XenApp”. In order to align with an enterprise-wide desktop usage model, XenDesktop 4 will now be licensed on a per named user basis rather than concurrent connection. Citrix will be offering special incentives for current XenApp customers that want to upgrade their licenses to XenDesktop 4.

It’s no secret that Citrix has been known to borrow a page or two from Microsoft’s play book from time to time, and named user licensing has got to be one of the most significant Microsoft alignments to date. It will make it much simpler to plan for and manage a desktop virtualization initiative. Customers will purchase a XenDesktop named named user license and a Microsoft VECD license for every user, hence the convergence of XenApp and XenDesktop (although XenApp still lives as a separate standalone product, but that’s another post).

Calling all Citrix customers! Register for the Citrix XenDesktop 4 public debut webinar on Oct 20th.

Citrix is finally releasing their long awaited major upgrade to XenDesktop. This just in from Citrix.

Tomorrow on October 6, 2009, Citrix will announce XenDesktop 4, a revolutionary desktop virtualization solution that will clearly exemplify our leadership in desktop virtualization. This is an unprecedented move forward for us all, as we will be able to offer our customers a desktop virtualization solution that delivers Windows desktops as an on-demand service to any user, anywhere.

Citrix has been the leader in application virtualization with XenApp for years; now we will drive desktop virtualization into the computing mainstream, led by XenDesktop 4. Desktop virtualization is hot, with a market potential bigger than server virtualization and we want you to join us at the forefront of this huge opportunity.

A standing issue since the release of VMware’s ESX 4.0 (vSphere) is that VMware’s own desktop virtualization product, View (formally VDI), is not yet compatible with it. That is you cannot create VMware View VMs on vSphere hosts. Furthermore, the only hypervisor you CAN use with VMware View is ESX 3.x.

Citrix’s XenDesktop, on the other hand, was designed from the beginning to be hypervisor agnostic. It runs on Hyper-V, XenServer, and ESX, INCLUDING vSphere!

This summer Citrix released an update to Pool Management that added support for vSphere and earlier this month released an update fixing some issues.

Click here for release notes and to download:
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX122630