Citrix Moves Beyond MetaFrame

Last month, Citrix officials gave attendees at the company's annual iForum event a sneak peek at its new collaboration tool, dubbed Project Pearl, as well as new upgrades for its flagship MetaFrame product line and the new NFuse Elite portal server. The company is focusing on building solutions that offer pervasive access to data and applications within the enterprise, according to Mark Templeton, Citrix president and CEO.

"The idea is to expand our server-based technology beyond MetaFrame with access and portal solutions," Templeton says. "The strategy is to make new solutions like NFuse Elite more suitable to a broad range of our channel partners."

Citrix's direction and its new technology have resonated with its VARs. Scott Miller, president of Server Centric Consulting, says he and his team of engineers are excited about the new developments. "Citrix is really pushing the envelope with server-based solutions, and they're dominating the enterprise market," Miller says. "Project Pearl, for example, is really going to take portal technology to the next level."

Project Pearl is an add-on solution for Citrix's MetaFrame XP application-delivery and management platform that offers a collaborative interface designed to let disparate users share real-time access on any application published by MetaFrame. Citrix plans to position Project Pearl, slated for release in the first half of 2003, as a collaboration solution to help remote users and enterprise workgroups maximize resources and increase productivity.

"Virtually any application published by MetaFrame can be shared as a real-time collaborative solution," said Bob Kruger, CTO and senior vice president of products at Citrix, during the conference. Similar to other Citrix products, Project Pearl leverages the server-based computing model. Therefore, the collaboration tool itself is just a simple, easily configured interface that accesses applications on the server without having to download them on each user's desktop.

Citrix also previewed upgrades and new versions of current products, such as Feature Release 3 of MetaFrame XP for Windows OSs, scheduled for release in the first half of 2003. Feature Release 3 will include support for the upcoming .Net Server 2003 and will offer users a single, universal print driver for every system running MetaFrame XP in the server farm and the ability to print in color at up to 600 dpi. SpeedScreen browser, which speeds up the loading of JPEG and GIF image files within Web pages, will also be included.

Boston-based Softricity, a software vendor and Citrix partner that offers an automated software installation and upgrade platform, says MetaFrame solutions have a profound impact on IT departments by allowing fewer people to easily manage more systems.

Usually, we see enterprises that have one IT person for every 50 or 60 employees," says David Greschler, executive vice president and co-founder of Softricity. "With Citrix's customers, it's more like one IT person for every 500 employees."

Templeton says his company will up its investment in the channel next year, offering the Fast Track training program that was used to drive adoption of NFuse Elite to select partners interested in early adoption of Project Pearl. He's confident new partner initiatives, such as rebates on NFuse Elite starter kits, as well as new technology like Project Pearl, will spark interest in Citrix server and portal solutions.

"We're not where we want to be yet," Templeton says, "but we're confident [the channel is going to see the value of ad hoc collaboration solutions and the power of moving applications to the server for distributed computing."