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Citrix Systems has unveiled the next phase of its vision and roadmap to radically change the economics of desktop computing. This strategy builds on last year's debut of Citrix XenDesktop, a market-leading enterprise virtualization solution that enables IT to significantly reduce costs by delivering server-based, hosted virtual desktops to office workers as a centrally-managed service.

Today's announcement enhances those benefits and extends them to millions of mobile workers with the introduction of a new client-side hypervisor that runs directly on each end user's PC or laptop computer.

This new hypervisor, being developed in collaboration with Intel Corporation, will be productized in an upcoming solution from Citrix code-named “Project Independence.” Combined with XenDesktop and the rest of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, Project Independence will transform the way corporate desktops are delivered and managed, giving IT all the security, simplicity and cost savings of centralized management, with an unprecedented level of performance, personalization and freedom for end users.

Five Predictions for the Next Era of Desktop Computing

The addition of Project Independence to the Citrix Delivery Center product family will have a profound impact on the way enterprise IT delivers and manages desktops, as well as how users experience those desktops. To realize this vision, Citrix will continue working closely with strategic partners like Microsoft and Intel to provide customers with open, innovative solutions that leverage their existing investments and help them transition to a new era of desktop computing where the old burdens and limitations no longer apply. Citrix believes this new era will be characterized by five fundamental changes.

Prediction #1 – Your Company Will No Longer Own Your Laptop

The ability to run secure, centrally-managed, virtual machines directly on end-user devices will enable companies to adopt large-scale “bring-your-own-computer” (BYOC) programs for mobile employee laptops, much like they do with cell phones and other mobile devices today. Instead of receiving generic, standard-issue laptops from IT when they join the company, employees in a BYOC program will receive vouchers, which can be applied to the purchase and support of any laptop they choose. This approach will greatly increase user satisfaction by giving employees the freedom to choose the exact mix of options, features and styles that match their personality and individual computing needs.

More importantly, moving to a BYOC model will allow CIOs to free themselves once and for all from the losing battle of trying to own, secure and manage laptops for an increasingly mobile and independent workforce. Today, most IT organizations install a set of standard desktop images on each laptop when an employee is first hired, physically deliver that laptop to the employee, and then try to patch, manage and secure everything remotely. As each laptop is customized, updated and mixed with personal data and applications, however, this task becomes increasingly complex, error-prone and difficult to secure.

The Citrix Xen-based client hypervisor will enable IT to deliver each employee's corporate desktop into a secure, centrally-managed virtual machine that runs directly on that user's laptop, making these problems a thing of the past. The industry's only client hypervisor with ‘100 percent isolation' will assure that corporate applications and data are completely isolated from personal data, greatly increasing security and simplifying regulatory compliance. Hardware upgrades, employee moves and lost or stolen laptops are also much less of an issue because IT administrators can centrally terminate the corporate desktop on any device and quickly deliver it to a new laptop. And because the desktop and applications execute locally, users are free to work online or offline with all the rich performance and experience of a traditional laptop. In short, this model delivers true “independence” to both CIOs and employees for the first time ever.

Prediction #2 – Your Company Will Spend More on Coffee and Office Supplies Than it Does on Desktop Management

Companies today spend billions of dollars trying to manage desktops and PCs across a far flung enterprise – installing, updating, securing, patching and managing operating systems and applications on each device independently. Billions more are spent trying to backup and recover user data, diagnose and repair hardware problems and manage granular user access control policies at the network level. By combining centralized image management with the ability to run personalized virtual desktops, Project Independence will radically lower the cost and complexity of desktop management.

Instead of trying to control the nearly infinite combination of variables on each unique desktop, Project Independence will incorporate proven technology from XenDesktop that enables IT departments to centrally manage one copy of Windows®, one copy of each application and one instance of each employee's user data and personal profile. These components will then be dynamically assembled and delivered as an on-demand service to secure virtual machines running directly on each user's device. This unique combination of centralized management and local execution will radically change the economics of desktop computing, seamlessly extending the value of desktop virtualization to millions of mobile workers without the onerous and impractical “check-in/check-out” procedures promoted as “offline VDI” by other virtualization vendors today. Project Independence will also fully automate data backup and recovery, even for mobile users, as changes to corporate virtual desktops on local machines are synchronized automatically with the datacenter.

Prediction #3 – You Will Access Your Corporate Desktop from Whatever Device is Most Convenient at the Time

Most corporate employees today are accustomed to accessing their corporate email from any location on a variety of different devices, depending on where they are or what they are doing at the time. As IT departments begin delivering virtual desktops as an on-demand service, users will have a similar level of flexibility for their corporate desktop and applications. Employees in this model will be able to access their corporate desktop from any location – at home, in the office, or on the road – using whatever device is most convenient at the time, even if it is not one they own. Citrix XenDesktop does this today for hosted virtual desktops when users are connected. Project Independence will extend a similar level of flexibility to millions of mobile users as well. These virtual desktops will be centrally managed in the datacenter and always available to users, even when disconnected from the network. And because virtual desktops are delivered in an isolated “bubble” with no dependency on the underlying device, the integrity of the corporate desktop, applications and data will remain intact at all times. 

Prediction #4 – You Will Switch Back and Forth Between Work and Personal Desktops on the Same Device, Without Thinking Twice

Companies who allow employees to run personal applications and data on corporate-owned computers inspire goodwill with employees, but this comes at the cost of significant management complexity and risk for the corporation. Companies who lock down corporate PCs reduce these costs, but end up with a work environment that is far more onerous for employees, reducing morale, limiting productivity and making it harder to recruit and retain top talent. By delivering corporate desktops as a service from the datacenter into secure virtual machines, companies can eliminate this increasingly untenable tradeoff. Employees in this new model will be able to seamlessly combine their work and personal computing into one device, working fluidly between the two with no risk to the company. This will allow users to intuitively switch back-and-forth between consumer applications or Facebook accounts on their personal desktop, and the CRM database on their corporate desktop, without ever compromising the security of the centrally-managed corporate desktop. Delivering the corporate desktop as a service from the datacenter will allow users to carry both their work and personal desktops wherever they go on the laptop of their choice, enhancing employee satisfaction and productivity and giving IT the peace of mind that corporate resources and data won't be compromised by the merging of these two environments. The Citrix Xen-based client hypervisor gives IT the assurance they need for data security with 100 percent isolation between one virtual machine and another.

Prediction #5 – You Will Never Complain About Your PC Being Too Slow Agai

The fact is, PCs are never refreshed as fast as software and hardware technology advances, leaving users always wanting something “newer, better, faster.” When desktops are delivered as a service, management, patches and upgrades take place in the datacenter to a single golden master and are delivered instantly to all users at the same time. Users in this model no longer have to wait for patch updates or for IT to make service calls for their systems – they simply receive the newest desktop available automatically. XenDesktop delivers a best-in-class user experience today by running virtual desktops on powerful servers in the datacenter, and delivering them over the network to end users. This model, however, works only for office-based employees who do their jobs while connected to the corporate network. The addition of Project Independence will further enhance this powerful capability by allowing virtual desktops to operate both online and offline, fully leveraging local computing resources and graphics processors to ensure the highest performance and multimedia experience for all users.

Availability: Citrix XenDesktop and the entire Citrix Delivery Center product family are available today. The initial delivery of Project Independence, including the new Xen client hypervisor optimized for Intel vPro technology, is planned for the second half of 2009.