Citrix virtualizes desktops

Desktop Server can reduce deployment, maintenance costs

Citrix promises to cut the cost of supporting desktops by as much as 40% with its Desktop Server, a data center platform that supports virtual Windows desktops that are accessed from desktops or thin-client machines.

The savings come from the reduced costs of provisioning the centralized desktops, patching and updating them, and installing applications, says Christopher Boone, CEO of UtilIT, a software-as-a-service provider in San Francisco.

His company uses the Desktop Server platform to deliver desktops to 1,500 PCs, Macs, Linux machines and PDAs, Boone says. The platform lets UtilIT provision individual desktops rapidly for customers based on the specific applications they want, he adds.

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Citrix promises to cut the cost of supporting desktops by as much as 40% with its Desktop Server, a data center platform that supports virtual Windows desktops that are accessed from desktops or thin-client machines.

The savings come from the reduced costs of provisioning the centralized desktops, patching and updating them, and installing applications, says Christopher Boone, CEO of UtilIT, a software-as-a-service provider in San Francisco.

His company uses the Desktop Server platform to deliver desktops to 1,500 PCs, Macs, Linux machines and PDAs, Boone says. The platform lets UtilIT provision individual desktops rapidly for customers based on the specific applications they want, he adds.

Desktop Server also reduces the chances of losing data if corporate laptops are lost or stolen. Because they hold no data from the virtual desktop, it can’t fall into the wrong hands, Citrix says. Resources in the data center pass only presentation layer information to the devices accessing them. The data itself remains in the data center.

The downside is that mobile laptop users can’t do work off the virtual desktop unless they are connected over the WAN, says Natalie Lambert, an analyst with Forrester Research. A user traveling on a plane would have to wait until it landed and could get Internet access again, for example.

But for businesses migrating to new operating systems, Desktop Server can reduce the downtime for workers as their gear is upgraded. Rather than losing their machine for an hour or so, they could be switched over to a virtual machine preconfigured centrally by IT, Lambert says.

But barring that, Desktop Server fits in with increasing demand for virtualized desktops that also can be supplied by vendors such as VMWare, she says.

Citrix says its virtual desktop platform lets customers take advantage of new licensing arrangements by Microsoft that allow data center deployment of virtual desktops.

Desktop Server runs on server hardware in a data center and interfaces with PC virtual machines on servers, blade PCs or Windows Terminal Servers, depending on the array of applications users need and the processing power they require. Applications can either be presented to remote machines or streamed to them, Citrix says.

Desktop Server is an outgrowth of Citrix’s Presentation Server that presents individual applications to remote machines, with Desktop Server presenting an entire operating system plus a chosen set of applications.

Citrix says that this capability could lower the cost of a Microsoft Vista desktop deployment because it avoids the expense of upgrading individual desktop machines. Instead current machines would access virtual desktops provisioned at a lower cost to handle the processing demands of Vista, Citrix says.

Citrix Desktop Server is available in the second quarter, with prices starting at $75 per named user.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.