Citrix Summit 2015: Day 1

As day 1 (really day 2) started and I realized it takes me 30 minutes to get from my hotel to Summit and working off bad in room coffee, I ponder my hotel choice for the event. Oh well, a quick grab of actual coffee (not hotel room coffee).... and on to the Vision Keynote! So this if the official kick off of Summit, even though it really started yesterday. Great attendance, great vibe, and a great staff as we walk into the main room. The lights dim and the information starts flowing. 

OK, there was some great presentations, but you want to see a summary, not read me ramble on about software defined stuff or whatever. But, I do have to say that Citrix has the "consumer" experience first, and this is of course not a new idea. But, this has been forgotten by many. Not that the consumer comes first, but the experience of the consumer must come first. 

One other idea that Mark Templeton introduced was the software defined workspace. What makes up the software defined workspace idea is agility, manageability, and predicting what users want before they know. 

Below is a quick list of the announcements during this keynote:

• XenServer 6.5 - What I have been excited about during the beta testing of XenServer 6.5 is a 64bit dom0!
• XenApp online migration tool - There are some powershell scripts to help migrate from XenApp 6.5 to 7.6, but this migration tool will make it that much easier.
• Citrix Receiver X1 - A nice new clean interface, that can be branded, and other features like application ratings and bundles (sounds like folders). You can see the new receiver here.
• Citrix XenMobile 10 - For more information, click here.
• Session recording (a.k.a. Smart Auditor) - Its funny how Citrix had some great features back in the day, then depreciated them, now bringing them back. I do give Citrix great credit in listening to customers and partners, and bringing them back. Again, they are focusing on the experience and this is very apparent.
• WorkspacePod - A complete Citrix certified integrated solution from the hardware to deliver workspaces.
• CloudBridge Virtual WAN - More information to come.
• Linux virtual desktops and apps - I am very excited about this. Now, I don't get very many requests for Linux virtual desktops, but I am a huge Linux fan and this makes me very happy!
• Framehawk integration - Where do I start? Framehawk helps with packet loss (yes I am over simplifying this). But to what extent? There was a demo with up to 10% loss over a WIFI connection with the user experience seeming to be unaffected except for the computer without using Framehawk. Nice, OK. Then they bumped up the packet loss to 50%! The computer not using Framehawk was unusable, but the computer using Framehawk was working just fine. Very, very, very impressed!
• Citrix X1 Mouse - Finally a mouse for iPad users!

After the keynote, off I went to partake of the many offerings of Citrix Summit 2015. First on the agenda was an instructor led lab about using the NetScaler 10.5 NITRO API. Now, I'm not really a developer, even though I have and currently working on some custom solutions. This was the first time I was introduced to this method and using REST interfaces. It was very interesting learning how to manipulate NetScaler outside the CLI and GUI. For more information, click here.

I finished out the day working on some more labs, like WAN optimization using CloudBridge. For more information, click here.

Next I will be posting a summary of the final day of Citrix Summit 2015 minus the NDA stuff.