Today at Citrix Synergy, Citrix unveiled a major new release of Citrix XenDesktop, the company’s market-leading solution for desktop virtualisation. The new XenDesktop 5 brings unprecedented levels of simplicity and power to virtual desktops for both users and IT. It supports a wide range of new consumer devices, thousands of new third-party products and an entirely new generation of web and software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps. XenDesktop 5 also extends the benefits of desktop virtualisation to millions of laptop users for the first time ever, giving them virtual desktops “to go” with the new Citrix XenClient hypervisor. To support the new XenDesktop 5 release, Citrix also unveiled an extensive new initiative to help customers move from the “wow” of desktop virtualisation to the “how” of successful implementation, leveraging the collective wisdom of thousands of customers who have already successfully transformed their enterprise desktop strategies by “going virtual.”
Key Facts and Highlights:
- Faster, Simpler, More Powerful – XenDesktop 5 makes it easier than ever to get started with desktop virtualisation. Customers can now achieve “10 minutes to Xen”, completing a new installation in just 10 minutes. Once up and running, managing virtual desktops with XenDesktop 5 also becomes faster and simpler than ever before with new role-based features. The new Desktop Studio™ console makes it easy for administrators to centrally design and manage virtual desktops, setting up new employees in seconds. XenDesktop 5 customers can also take advantage of the new Desktop Director™ console, giving helpdesk administrators a powerful way to monitor, troubleshoot and support virtual desktops for thousands of users across a large, distributed enterprise, with real-time information on usage, status and service levels. XenDesktop 5 also supports Microsoft System Center, making it easy for customers to manage applications on physical and virtual desktops with a familiar set of tools and processes.
- Taking User Experience to a New Level – XenDesktop 5 adds powerful new HDX enhancements that dramatically improve performance for resource intensive tasks like audio and video collaboration and large-file printing, even over low bandwidth connections. XenDesktop 5 also features a captivating new end user experience. From new welcome screens inviting first-time users to their new virtual desktop, to an entirely redesigned virtual desktop viewer, every detail of the XenDesktop 5 user interface is designed to make each user’s workspace feel familiar and inviting.
- Touch-Enabled Support for New Consumer Devices – By leveraging the Citrix Receiver universal software client, XenDesktop 5 makes it easy to deliver business desktops and apps to the rapidly growing number of new devices flooding the workforce, including PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. XenDesktop 5 adds support for a long list of new devices, along with extensive user experience enhancements such as the ability to instantly “touch-enable” existing enterprise apps that were never designed to run on new touch-screen tablets such as the Apple iPad or BlackBerry PlayBook.
- Connecting Virtual Desktops to a New Generation of Apps – By leveraging the new Citrix Receiver, XenDesktop 5 changes the game, making it easy to deliver one-click, single sign-on access to an entirely new generation of applications, including externally-hosted web, cloud and SaaS apps. This integration makes it easy for IT to deliver a rich array of Windows, web and SaaS apps to each user with a simple, unified experience, regardless of what type of app it is, or where it is actually running.
- Beyond VDI with Virtual Desktops “To Go” – Last year, XenDesktop 4 introduced a new technology called FlexCast that gave customers the flexibility to deliver a range of virtual desktop technologies from a single product – from personalised VDI-based desktops ideal for office workers, to shared desktops optimized for task workers. XenDesktop 5 takes the FlexCast technology one step further, enabling IT to deliver virtual desktops “to go” that run directly on each user’s PC or laptop. This approach, which leverages the new XenClient hypervisor, is ideal for millions of corporate laptop users, providing IT with all the central management and security benefits of hosted virtual desktops, while giving mobile workers the flexibility to work connected or disconnected.
- Secure BYOC with Citrix XenVault – An increasing number of users are bringing their own devices to work as outside contractors or via employee bring your own computer (BYOC) programs. In these scenarios, IT needs to provide access to corporate applications and secure any confidential data, but does not want the hassles of installing applications or managing personal laptops. XenDesktop 5 addresses this scenario in the simplest way possible by delivering corporate apps as an on-demand service, then automatically encrypting any documents created by those apps and saving them transparently in an encrypted folder on the user’s laptop. In addition to ensuring corporate data is secure at all times on non-corporate owned devices, XenVault also enables IT to securely wipe any corporate data remotely when a contract is over, an employee terminates, or the laptop is lost or stolen.