Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced Citrix® XenDesktop™ 3, the newest release of its market-leading desktop virtualization solution. XenDesktop 3, a key component of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, incorporates several of the company’s new Citrix® HDX™ technologies (see separate announcement today), giving virtual desktop users a richer “high-definition” experience with enhanced support for multimedia, audio and video. XenDesktop 3 also dramatically improves scalability, hosting twice as many virtual desktops per server as previous versions. And with version 3, XenDesktop becomes the first product on the market to deliver Microsoft® Windows® desktops from a common set of centrally managed images that can be run either in the datacenter (hosted), or directly on a PC or thin client device (local). This new capability gives IT organizations far more flexibility, reducing desktop management costs by making efficient use of distributed processing power across both servers and end point devices.
HDX Brings “High-Definition Experience” to Hosted Virtual Desktops
Widespread adoption of desktop virtualization requires the ability to deliver a high-performance, personalized experience for hosted virtual desktops that is as good as an installed desktop on a local PC. To enhance this experience, XenDesktop 3 adds the new Citrix HDX MediaStream technology, which accelerates multimedia performance by sending compressed streams to endpoints and playing them locally. XenDesktop 3 also incorporates Citrix HDX Plug-and-Play technology for transparent support of MP3 players, digital cameras, smart phones, scanners and other local devices, as well as Citrix HDX Broadcast technology for reliable, high-performance acceleration of virtual desktops and applications over any network, including high-latency and low-bandwidth environments.
Twice the Number of Hosted Virtual Desktops per Server
XenDesktop 3 includes several enhancements that dramatically improve virtual machine density and efficiency in the datacenter, allowing customers to host up to twice as many hosted virtual desktops per server as previous versions. These new optimizations cut server acquisition costs in half and dramatically reduce ongoing management and power consumption costs, allowing significantly larger deployments than before at no additional cost.
Manage Centrally, Run in the Datacenter or at the End Point
With version 3, XenDesktop becomes the first solution on the market to deliver both hosted virtual desktops and local streamed desktops from a single image store, leveraging the same delivery infrastructure. Most virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions on the market offer only hosted virtual desktops, in which each desktop runs inside a virtual machine in the datacenter. Adding support for local streamed desktops lets XenDesktop administrators stream desktops from the same golden master images, and execute them locally on any network-connected endpoint capable of running a desktop operating system. This powerful combination adds significant flexibility and cost savings, allowing IT to centrally manage desktops for office workers and run them wherever it makes the most sense, leveraging the distributed processing power of both servers and endpoint devices.
Enhanced Profile Management and Smart Card Support
XenDesktop 3 also includes a variety of new features to support simpler management, easier user personalization and enhanced security. Most significant among these new features is fully integrated user profile management, making it far easier for IT to provide a consistent, personalized experience for each unique user every time they log in. Version 3 also includes broad support for smart card security authentication systems which are widely adopted throughout government, financial services and healthcare organizations. XenDesktop not only enables this added level of security for gaining general access to the desktop environment, it also ensures that this information is seamlessly and transparently passed through to individual applications within each virtual desktop. Additional details regarding all the new XenDesktop 3 functionality can be found at http://www.citrix.com/xendesktop3.
“The release of XenDesktop 3 will accelerate virtual desktop adoption by driving down costs through centralized management and delivery. With HDX Technology, we are providing users a true high-definition experience for their desktops, addressing a critical requirement for broad user acceptance,” said Raj Dhingra, group vice president and general manager of the Desktop Delivery Group at Citrix. “Through these innovations, we are transforming the way desktops are delivered and managed, offering a secure, high-performance and personalized desktop for our enterprise customers.”
“Microsoft and Citrix have been delivering value to desktop customers for more than 20 years. Our joint VDI offer provides customers with the best in class virtual desktop experience through Citrix XenDesktop 3; integrated management across existing physical and virtual desktops with Microsoft System Center; and cost-effective virtualization with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V,” said Scott Woodgate, director, desktop virtualization, Microsoft.
Pricing and Availability
Citrix XenDesktop 3 will be generally available from authorized Citrix partners in February 2009, and from the Citrix website at http://www.citrix.com/xendesktop. Suggested retail pricing begins at $75 per concurrent user.
About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in Application Delivery Infrastructure. More than 215,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 8,000 partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2008 was $1.6 billion.
For Citrix Investors
This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.
Citrix®, XenDesktop™, HDX™ and Citrix Delivery Center™ are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
XenDesktop 3 Partner Support
“Dell’s Flexible Computing Solutions are designed to deliver value to our customers in both the near- and long-term. Citrix XenDesktop is a core component of our solutions strategy and we are pleased to support Citrix’s latest release. We will continue working with technology innovators like Citrix to ensure that our customers’ investments in IT are easy to integrate, easy to manage and deliver the performance and ROI customers expect from Dell.”
--Juan Vega, Senior Product Manager, Dell, Inc.
“Customers grappling with data center challenges of increasing power requirements and management burden can achieve tangible savings while simplifying through the combination of HP infrastructure software and Citrix XenDesktop 3. This solution can double the number of virtual desktops on a single server, freeing up precious rack space while reducing infrastructure management costs.”
--Scott Farrand, Vice President, HP Insight Software
“Citrix XenDesktop 3 represents a significant milestone toward ubiquitous adoption of virtual desktops by delivering improved scalability, simplicity and a high-definition user experience. Systems administrators can manage pools of virtual desktops with unparalleled ease, and with significantly less hardware and energy. End users will receive an experience that is indistinguishable, or even better, than their traditional PC. When combined with the Citrix XenDesktop appliance mode, available across all of IGEL’s new Universal Desktop series, organizations can deliver all these benefits to users with ‘plug in and logon’ simplicity.”
--Stephen Yeo, Worldwide Strategic Marketing Director, IGEL Technology Ltd.
“Wyse and Citrix's collaboration continues to move the virtual desktop market forward. XenDesktop 3 continues to raise the bar in cost savings, while delivering a high-definition experience. Together with Wyse Viance Desktop Appliance for XenDesktop, we are delivering a low-cost, high-performance virtual desktop solution for knowledge workers throughout the enterprise.”
--Ricardo Antuna, Vice President of Products & Business Development, Wyse Technology
Contacts:
Karin Gilles, 408-790-8544
karin.gilles@citrix.com
