ISV Partners Tackle Citrix Management Needs

That fact was made clear earlier this month at the vendor&s iForum 2005 conference, where Citrix CEO and President Mark Templeton talked about how the Citrix ecosystem aims to address complexity in an increasingly difficult IT environment.

Templeton said Citrix, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is developing access infrastructure and application delivery models for the new world of distributed computing over the Internet. He noted, though, that the complexity imposes a management challenge for the vendor, as well as for its customers and partners.

“You have an increasing number of applications to deal with, and the mix is growing. A whole set of [application] architectures, multitiered client/server, Web applications, HTML, Web services, desktop applications, Win32 and Java—all in the data center, desktop and data center,” Templeton said. “This is the kind of landscape you face, and we need to deliver the application infrastructure you need.”

To that end, Citrix is designing system health monitoring and management capabilities. Dubbed Kevlar and Iris, those technologies are part of Citrix&s next-generation Constellation project for Microsoft&s Longhorn Server, due in 2007. They will provide user experience monitoring, service-level agreement monitoring, improved audit and compliance, hot updates and scaling, automatic load balancing, on-demand system configuration for continuous operations and system state management.

But those technologies won&t be available for two to three years. Citrix needs ISV partners and service firms to extend and improve management for the current platform, Citrix executives said.

“We can&t do this alone,” said Scott Herren, group vice president at Citrix.

And at iForum, ISV partners showcased a variety of new management and performance optimization products designed for Citrix&s current software.

RTO Software, Atlanta, for example, unveiled its RTO Optimization Console for managing the Citrix Memory Optimization Management capabilities in Presentation Server 4.0. RTO licensed that server performance optimization technology to Citrix for inclusion in version 4.0, which shipped earlier this year as part of Citrix Access Suite 4.0. The console offers additional memory optimization tuning capabilities beyond those in the Citrix server, including optimization scheduling and history. The multiserver centralized console is available at no cost for managing local servers or licensed remote servers.

Visual Networks, Rockville, Md., announced its Visual Uptime Select Suite, a new offering that enables administrators to proactively monitor network performance. One module, called the Select Bandwidth Manager for Citrix Presentation Server, gives administrators in-depth visibility into published applications under Citrix&s ICA protocol. This allows administrators and partners to identify bandwidth use on a per-user and per-application basis while also having an end-to-end view into all Citrix published apps and non-Citrix apps across the network, at local and remote sites. It will be available in early 2006. Pricing begins at $2,500 per site.

Others ISVs entered into the advanced management and monitoring market for Citrix server farms.

Enteo Software, Schaumburg, Ill., unveiled its Enteo Management Suite for Citrix Presentation Server, which simplifies and automates configuration management and centralized management for server farms and fat clients. The software offers secure change management and creates a test environment in which administrators and partners can model how applications will behave in live Citrix situations. It also provides drag-and-drop procedures that make it easier to set up Citrix servers and add new servers, users and apps to the environment, Enteo said.“In the past, people used the cookbook approach, but resources started to strain after [imaging] seven servers,” said Chuck Fritz, vice president of Americas at Enteo.

Pricing starts at $42 per concurrent user, with volume discounts available.

Enteo has traditionally sold direct but introduced at iForum this week a new channel program aimed at Citrix resellers.

Enteo also distributed a sales accelerator CD for Presentation Server that allows resellers to simply run an algorithm and install a Citrix server for customers in about 45 minutes. Typically, it takes between five and eight hours to build and install a Citrix server demonstration at a customer site, Fritz said.

Meanwhile, Reflectent Software, Westford, Mass., also announced that it has extended its EdgeSight for Citrix Presentation Server, a tool that monitors and diagnoses the application and system performance issues of Citrix users. This tool installs an agent on Citrix&s ICA-based client, giving administrators simultaneous views of the end-user session and server activity. It will enable better resource management and capacity planning, and will allow administrators and partners to quickly size up performance problems, executives said.

The cost is roughly $200 per concurrent user. EdgeSight for Citrix Server is priced at $25,000. The company has traditionally sold direct but has taken on a select number of resellers and service partners.

Other ISVs are targeting the growing base of Citrix servers being deployed at SMBs and enterprises served by channel partners.

Also at iForum, TriCerat, Columbia, Md., announced its own management suite, upgraded and integrated for Microsoft Terminal Server and Citrix Presentation Server 4.0. Simplify Suite 4.5, which is available now, includes Simplify Printing, Lockdown, Profiles and Resources modules. The Lockdown utility allows IT administrators to prevent users from running unauthorized applications.

Ingenica, Toronto, unveiled ManageView, a fully hosted Windows or Citrix server monitoring tool for SMBs. Priced at about $75 per server per month, it collects data such as server uptime, CPU memory and hard-disk usage over Internet connections and graphically presents the information over the color-coded ManageView Dashboard.

Apptimum, Sunrise, Fla., rolled out its Migrate CI, which fully automates server migration to the Citrix Access platform. The firm&s rules-based Computing State Engine helps customers move applications to Citrix Presentation Server and the full Citrix Access Suite. It is available on a per-server basis from the company and from select partners.

In addition, Citrix hardware and software partner Wyse Technology, San Jose, Calif., introduced its latest thin client, based on the recently released Wyse Thin OS Version 5.0. The Wyse S10 thin client supports multiple sessions with seamless windows, plug-and-play installation and configuration, stateless operation, and client imaging from a standard FTP server.

Citrix itself announced its own Management Pack designed to ease management of Citrix servers within Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. Presentation Server Management Pack for MOM 2005 enables joint customers to monitor, collect, filter and analyze data from Citrix Presentation 3.0 and 4.0 servers and server farms within Microsoft&s management and monitoring platform.