Key Takeaways from Citrix Synergy 2018 Announcements That Did Not Make The Keynote

Just like many of you, I had the pleasure of attending another awesome Citrix Synergy last week in Anaheim. Had the chance to meet many of the community members, customers and fellow Citrites in person. As is always the case, I was not able to attend a lot of sessions due to customer/internal meetings and such and spent some time this week catching up on content. While Workspace, ServiceNow Integration and Analytics were front and center, what I’m realizing is that there were plenty of great announcements made during the breakout sessions that many of you probably missed. If you want to learn more about what was announced as part of the keynote read Jason Samuel’s blog post.  I wanted to spend some time summarizing some of the most interesting announcements that were not part of the keynote. I am still in the process of reviewing the sessions and will update this post over time.

Workspace Environment Management (WEM) To Be Offered As A Citrix Cloud Service

WEM is Citrix’s solution for user environment management and resource optimization along with UPM. On average, customers see a 30% improvement in server scalability and login times can also be improved significantly. WEM did require certain infrastructure components to be deployed. However, at Synergy it was announced that the Citrix will be offering a WEM service essentially hosting, managing and maintaining all the infrastructure components such that the customer only has to deploy the agents and the cloud connector. This should make the solution even more appealing to customers and help with server scalability and user experience in a hybrid cloud environment. 

Learn more about this announcement in SYN231 (Recording below. Start at around 6:15)

Seamless Roaming O365 Outlook Email Cache and Search Index Database using UPM

A new feature is coming in UPM that allows handling of large files specifically designed for O365. And it is controlled with a single policy setting in UPM. Once the policy is enabled, a per user search index db is created and all outlook requests are redirected to the database thus enabling a roaming search index for the user for both virtual apps and desktops. Its limited to 32 bit version of Office for now. The search index and OST file will be wrapped in a VHDX container and stored in the profile. Learn more about this feature in the SYN231 video posted above. Start watching at 22:30. 

 

WEM and UPM Capabilities Now Extended To Manage Physical Endpoints

As part of Citrix’s Unified Endpoint Management strategy, WEM and UPM will soon be able to manage physical endpoints. This is a welcome change and will help customers use the same solution set to manage both physical endpoints and the virtual workloads. Learn more in the SYN231 video above. Start watching at 30:52.

PVS Management Directly From Citrix Cloud

On prem PVS workloads can soon be managed directly from Citrix Cloud. In addition a new PVS cloud license will be introduced. A customer can download the PVS cloud license from MyCitrix and install on onprem license server to manage PVS from Citrix cloud.

More info in the SYN131 video below. Watch from 28:40

Azure QuickDeploy for XenApp and XenDesktop Service

Azure Quickdeploy is a feature that is available for the XenApp Essential customers that makes it extremely easy to build Citrix workloads in Azure. The same wizard has now been ported over to XA/XD service. You can specify your Azure subscription info, connect to a resource location, upload a custom image, provide domain information and the machine catalog will be created for you. This is perfect for small deployments and POC’s. This feature will be released in the coming weeks for XA/XD service. It will only support Server VDAs. Also important to note that Quick deploy cant be used in conjunction with studio. Its an either/or. To learn more in the video. Watch from 32:00

 

Extending Citrix Cloud Support For Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud

While Google cloud got plenty of attention at the keynote (and I will have a follow up blog looking specifically into Citrix Cloud and GCP), it is also worth noting that we will be extending platform support for Oracle cloud infrastructure. This is of particular interest for customers who have a significant investment in Oracle cloud today. Its all Hyper-V based which is also appealing to many customers. There is an Oracle deployment guide already published and the planned availability for support in Oracle cloud is Q2, 2018. Learn more in the SYN131 video above and start watching at 34:20

 

 

 

Citrix Director Enhancements

There were a lot of Citrix Director enhancements announced including Resource App prediction based helping admins predict future resource usage, ability to generate custom reports, a set of predefined default smart alerts (as opposed to admins having to go and define alerts manually), detailed breakdown of logon duration including a breakdown of “interactive session”, NMAS integration, the ability to troubleshoot XenMobile devices right from Director and last but not the least App Probing. App probing in particular is really exciting as it allows you to define and automate app probes for your published apps and desktops thereby helping admins be proactive about how the published resources are performing and getting ahead of potential issues. Lots of features to get excited about!! Watch SYN126 (below) for further details.

The New Citrix Files Application

The new Citrix Files application (new Sharefile client for desktop) has combined the capabilities of Sync, Drive Mapper and Deskop into a single application. Just like drive mapper, it provides a single pane of glass for all your data (network drives, sharepoint, personal cloud, OneDrive For Business etc). You also now have the ability to perform workflows directly from windows explorer or finder. You now also have the ability to map multiple drives to specific sub folders within sharefile or connectors like OneDrive for Business. The configuration can be through Citrix policies within Studio. Watch SYN100 below from 19:25 to learn more.

Intelligent Traffic Management (formerly Cedexis) Is Awesome!

Earlier this year, Citrix announced the acquisition of Cedexis to add to the Netscaler portfolio. People like to describe Cedexis as the Waze of Traffic Management. Its not far from the truth. Cedexis collects 14 billion data points on a daily basis from over 900 millon end user sessions and 40,000+ networks around the world to intelligently route traffic thereby offering the best possible user experience and intelligently avoiding application disruptions. Watch SYN123 below to get a quick overview of Cedexis.

HDX Enhancements

There were quite a few updates covered in SYN206 around HDX. I’ve tried to highlight a few below. I would highly recommend reviewing the recording below.

Browser Content Redirection 2.0

Backported as a stand-alone compatible component with LTSR 7.15. Chrome (Q3) and Edge will also be supported. Modern portocols such as HLS, DASH and Web Assembly will be supported. The rendering engine will be made part of the Workspace App. Browser content redirection 2.0 will be able to offload WebRTC as well!

Citrix Ready Partners in the Video multicasting industry like Qumu, vBrick, Ramp and Haivision will support Client side fetching and Browser content redirection for live video events where Receiver client side fetch can fetch the video from the branch office edge caching appliance.

Real Time Optimization

Skype RealTime Optimization Pack support coming for Chromebooks (that can run android apps) in H2 2018. Hardware acceleration for endpoints with AMD GPUs is also expected around the same time frame. 

Microsoft Teams Support Strategy 

In the short term, Citrix plans to support the Microsoft teams web client with browser content redirection 2.0. Chrome browser will be the first to be supported and windows endpoints will initially be supported with Linux endpoints to follow. File uploads might have limitations with browser content redirection 2.0 and MS Teams. The workaround is to use Sharefile or other such solutions to upload the files. 

Long term goal is to develop a receiver side media engine on all supported platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux) for real time optimization of MS Teams UC content. 

Delivery of Cisco Jabber from virtualized desktops

 

Workspace App and Citrix Receiver

After the keynote, in conversations with customers and partners there were a lot of questions around Workspace App and what it means for customers running Citrix receiver today. This is covered in great detail in SYN133. If you are a customer leveraging Citrix receiver, it will be automatically upgraded to Workspace app via Citrix auto update and it is fully backward compatible. All the new Workspace capabilities above and beyond virtual apps and desktops will only get enabled if you subscribe to the various Citrix Workspace services. So in other words, if you are an on premises customer leveraging  Storefront or an on premises customer leveraging Citrix Workspace just for site aggregation (more below on site aggregation), your client will be automatically updated to Citrix Workspace app but none of the functionality changes other than than UI having a new look. Watch the video below from 21:10. The session also provides a deep dive into Citrix Workspace App and demos of the new capabilities. 

Workspace and Site Aggregation

The new site aggregation feature now allows customers to tie their existing on premises deployments to Citrix Workspace (four step workflow). For customers who are on Web Interface or an older version of Storefront now have the option of leveraging Workspace to aggregate their virtual apps and desktops and deliver it to their end users with the new modern user experience. Moreover with Workspace, customers no longer have to worry about upgrading (as you would with on premises storefront) as Citrix manages and maintains the Workspace. 

Gateway Service Updates

When the Gateway service was introduced a while ago, the primary function of the service was secure ICA proxy. The service has evolved quite a bit and now supports single sign on to Enterprise Web and SaaS apps including a library of 40+ pre-defined SaaS templates. Gateway service can also be integrated with an on premises storefront deployment and supports hybrid deployments as well with Workspace aggregation. Direct connect to VDA without the need for connectors was also announced which will lead to increased scalability. Another key announcement was the much requested two factor authentication natively through the gateway service. This will be made possible with native One Time Password (OTP) support.

For an update on all Citrix Cloud services, I highly recommend watching SYN100. It also includes a lot of great demos.