Guild Companies--Citrix Announces New Pricing, Product Bundles, Portal Enhancements

Most of the 2,500 people attending the iForum user conference hosted by application access software vendor Citrix Systems in Florida last week, were buzzing about the upcoming version of the company's MetaFrame XP Presentation Server. The "technology preview" (beta) version was being demonstrated at the show and is available for download at the MyCitrix portal. MetaFrame is Citrix's flagship product. It manages applications over a network and allows common access from multiple platforms. For shops used to running applications at the PC level, it plays a mighty role in the switch to running apps on a central server.

The next version of MetaFrame XP, code-named "Hudson," is expected to become generally available in the first quarter of 2004. It promises considerable server-management-type improvements that users have been asking for as they cope with managing ever-growing and often-disorderly server farms. As the foundation of the MetaFrame Access Suite, MetaFrame provides access to Microsoft Windows, Web, and legacy applications from anywhere, on any device, over any connection.

At the top of the list of management enhancements with MetaFrame XP is the capability to centrally manage server farms with a single monitor. The benefits of simplified administration that come with single-tool functionality also include the capability to manage sessions, applications, servers, and zones from multiple server farms. Citrix is also promising to rearchitect the behavior of the zone data collector, which will allow server farms to be more scalable. Servers can be configured so users are sent to the least-loaded server in the zone or in the farm. Sharing licenses across farms is also rumored to be on tap.

Citrix produces MetaFrame Presentation Servers primarily for Windows, but it is also available for the most popular Unix flavors, including Sun Microsystems' Solaris, IBM's AIX, and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX. Citrix-watchers wonder if Linux will soon be included, but the company has made no official mention of it. Because Citrix has long-standing and close ties to Microsoft, and Microsoft's ill will toward Linux is obvious, it seems Citrix might risk its sweetheart status if it's caught fooling around with Linux.

Microsoft just showed it still loves Citrix by bestowing its Global Independent Software Vendor Partner of the Year award on Citrix during Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference two weeks ago. Microsoft's 35 Global ISV Partners, in addition to Citrix, include companies such as Computer Associates, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel Systems, and Symantec. Citrix and Microsoft have worked together for more than 14 years, on projects that extend the capabilities of Microsoft's server operating platforms. The two companies codeveloped the technology on which Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server is based, and Citrix is one of a select few partners that are Global Gold Certified.

That's not to say there are smiles all around the campfire, however. At the iForum keynote address, J.P. Savage, Scotia Bank's senior vice president of systems, operations, and technical services, took the opportunity to blast what he called the "Wintel churn cycle," which results in a constant upgrading of Microsoft applications and Intel-based computers. Savage dutifully pointed out that Citrix MetaFrame servers provide some relief by extending a PC's life cycle. Scotia Bank is the number-two bank in Canada.

Since Citrix announced its strategy to expand into the access infrastructure market in March, it has delivered a suite of products that includes Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, Feature Release 3 for Windows, Citrix MetaFrame Secure Access Manager, Citrix MetaFrame Password Manager, and Citrix MetaFrame Conferencing Manager. These four components comprise the MetaFrame Access Suite. Several pre-packaged bundles of the suite were unveiled last week.

The standard MetaFrame Access Suite targets new customers who need interoperable access infrastructure to manage, measure, and monitor user access to IT services. The suggested retail price is $599 per concurrent user. This package includes MetaFrame Presentation Server for Windows, MetaFrame Secure Access Manager, MetaFrame Password Manager, and MetaFrame Conferencing Manager.

The MetaFrame Access Suite, Step-up Edition, is designed for MetaFrame Presentation Server for Windows customers to transform their application access solution into an access infrastructure solution. The suggested retail price is $299 per concurrent user. This package includes MetaFrame Secure Access Manager, MetaFrame Password Manager, and MetaFrame Conferencing Manager.

The MetaFrame Access Suite, Migration Edition, is for MetaFrame 1.8 Presentation Server customers who need to migrate the most complete access infrastructure solution available today. The suggested retail price is $399 per concurrent user, and this package includes MetaFrame Presentation Server for Windows, MetaFrame Secure Access Manager, MetaFrame Password Manager, and MetaFrame Conferencing Manager.

Volume purchases of the MetaFrame Access Suite are available under the open- and flex-licensing models. Prices include Subscription Advantage, which offers automatic, priority access to the latest product upgrades and enhancements.

To give some insight on how important MetaFrame servers are to Citrix and why the company is looking beyond a one-dimensional product line and into the access infrastructure market, consider that almost 90 percent of its $527.5 million in revenues in 2002 came from MetaFrame licensing fees.

According to just-released results from a Citrix survey of its own customers, the most-needed infrastructure solutions are password management and single-sign-on solutions. This is clearly a hot button, even though only 16 percent of respondents currently use single-sign-on software within their organizations. Looking ahead, 59 percent of Citrix customers plan to use SSO software in the near future, and 80 percent plan to implement an SSO solution within the next two years.

More than 60 percent of survey respondents indicated that pressures on user productivity and on-demand access to enterprise information resources for local and remote users are greatly impacting their IT departments. More than 90 percent of respondents are deploying or plan to deploy Web applications within their organizations. Also, less than half of the respondents currently use an application conferencing solution, but 80 percent of that group expects to implement application conferencing within the next two years.

One of the reasons why Citrix is promoting the results of this survey is that each of the points noted by customers is being addressed in the next MetaFrame release.

Citrix has also been focusing on interoperability issues. It shares considerable customer bases with software giants IBM, SAP, and PeopleSoft. With the latest integration between Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server and the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal, announced last week, PeopleSoft customers gain the capability to deploy non-PeopleSoft applications to the portal. The integration gives users a single point of access to PeopleSoft applications and other Windows, Unix, legacy, and Web applications, in addition to content and other enterprise resources, through any standard Web browser, regardless of the client platform.

The portal provides the infrastructure required to deploy enterprise-wide access to Web-based applications, knowledge management suites, collaborative services, and marketplace sites through an Internet browser.

Cost savings are expected because application rewrites are avoided, and the centralized Web application deployment through the MetaFrame Server should deliver noticeable performance improvements, even in low-bandwidth environments such as wireless networks. SSL encryption of application data over the Web is another benefit Citrix gives PeopleSoft customers, many of which are also Citrix customers.

A custom template is available to MetaFrame Presentation Server and PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal customers for download at www.citrix.com/cdn.

Organizations that share the IBM WebSphere portal and the Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server also gained a higher degree of integration last week as Citrix introduced an updated portlet designed to provide the same secure, single-point access to heterogeneous applications, content, and resources. Citrix and IBM have worked over the last decade to bring integrated enterprise access solutions to customers across a host of industries. An earlier release of this portlet is one of the top-five most downloaded portlets in the IBM WebSphere catalog.

The new portlet includes multiple authentication modes, increasing both resource and application security. In addition, it provides Java client support, configurable user settings for sound, color, and window size, and built-in multi-farm support. The portlet is built on a flexible architecture, so that customers can customize the solution to meet their individual scalability and fault-tolerance requirements.

WebSphere is used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide to create, deploy, and integrate business applications and to enable high-volume transactions over the Web. The new custom portlet is available for download, too.

An arrangement similar to the PeopleSoft and IBM portal integrations was also put into place for future versions of SAP's Enterprise Portal and its supported Web browsers. The Enterprise Portal, an integral part of the SAP NetWeaver technology suite and the Citrix package, called iView, will let SAP customers extend the reach of their SAP solutions to include available application resources, regardless of origination.

iView will return information from sources such as relational databases, ERP and CRM systems, enterprise applications, collaboration tools, and the Web. As with the previously mentioned portals, it will give joint customers secure, single-point access to any application and information source deployed through MetaFrame, including SAP solutions and Web, Windows, Unix, custom, or commercially packaged applications, directly through the SAP Enterprise Portal, and without the need for application rewrites or reprogramming.