Citrix to launch Desktop Server

Thincomputing.net discovered a new, unannounced product appeared on the official website: the Citrix Desktop Server.

Citrix has silently launched a new product page with a product called Citrix Desktop Server. All though there is very little information on the web page, an educated guess would be that this is the first real product in the whole Citrix VDI Dynamic Desktop Initiative.

The first step Citrix made into this space was of course the Citrix Remote Desktop Broker. This looked like kind of a “hasty” solution just so Citrix could step into the VDI hype. One of the drawbacks of the Remote Desktop broker is that it is a double-hop solution: RDP through ICA.

The next step was an announcement of a project called PortICA, which is a the more mature product, which will it’s the successor of the Remote Desktop Broker. One of the main features is that it brings the ICA protocol to Windows XP (and Vista). This eliminates the double-hop problem that the Remote Desktop Broker imposes.

This PortICA product will probably be one of the core components of Citrix Desktop server. What will undoubtedly also be a part of Citrix Desktop Server is some of Virtual Desktop-provisioning software, so that (pools of) VMs can be dynamicly managed. Think creation, deletion, suspending here. What they also clearly have big plans for is Citrix Edgesight. This will probably also be a part of Citrix Desktop server…

Read the whole article at source.

The name is hilariously confusing: is it a desktop or is it a server…?