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Citrix Systems, Inc. announced Citrix XenApp 5
August 2008 by Marc Jacob
Citrix Systems, Inc. announced Citrix® XenApp™ 5, the next generation of application virtualization solution. The new release of Citrix’s flagship product breaks through performance and operating-cost barriers, making application start times up to 10 times faster, dramatically improving end-user experience and lowering application management costs by more than 25 percent over previous versions.1 XenApp 5, when used alone or in conjunction with Citrix® XenDesktop™, now makes it even easier for customers to centralize applications in the datacenter and deliver them as an on-demand service to both physical or virtual desktops for either online or offline usage – an approach that improves security, enhances user productivity and can save millions of dollars over traditional methods of installing and managing applications.
A key component of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, XenApp combined with Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix® XenServer™, creates an end-to-end virtualization solution that spans servers, applications and desktops. The new XenApp 5 release is being featured on September 9, 2008 as part of a global, online launch event called, Citrix Delivery Center Live! This virtual event is the first in a series that will take place in the second half of 2008 highlighting the entire Citrix Delivery Center product family. This debut event features presentations, chat sessions and online demos from Citrix, as well as participation from key partners such as Microsoft and Intel.
Application Virtualization Cuts Cost of Application Management in Half
Windows-based applications continue to represent the majority of applications managed by IT today. Unfortunately, traditional methods of installing, patching, updating, managing and removing these applications on every desktop can be extremely complex and costly with today’s rapidly changing business environment and user requirements. As a result, IT costs continue to climb, business needs are left unmet and user experience and productivity suffer.
To thrive in today’s volatile business environment, organizations need a better, more flexible approach for delivering these applications across a diverse and rapidly changing user base. For more than 200,000 customers and 100 million end users around the world, centralizing applications in the datacenter and delivering them as an on-demand service to end users via Citrix XenApp has proven to be the answer. In fact, in a recent study, Gartner found that the total cost of ownership of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50 percent lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.2
Delivering a “Better-than-Installed” Experience
With the release of XenApp 5, Citrix is raising the bar once again with significant new improvements to performance, user experience and cost savings. With version 5, Citrix has improved local application start-up time by up to 10 times, enabled IT to prioritize users and applications for maximum performance and dramatically enhanced ease-of-use for end users. In addition, XenApp 5 reduces the cost of application preparation and ongoing maintenance by more than 25 percent and cuts support costs by making it easy for IT to proactively detect and prevent potential performance issues even before they occur. In total, XenApp 5 includes more than 50 new major enhancements that come together to deliver an experience that is unequivocally “better-than-installed” for both end users and IT.
Delivering Applications to Virtual and Physical Desktops
XenApp 5 is the best way to deliver applications to both physical and virtual desktops and is a key component of the Citrix desktop delivery solution, XenDesktop. Using XenApp to deliver applications into virtual desktops, in fact, has been proven to cut down server infrastructure costs by an additional 50 percent3, further improving datacenter efficiency and green computing initiatives.
Enabling a Smooth Transition to Microsoft Windows Server 2008
XenApp 5, which runs on the Microsoft Windows Server platform, leverages all the enhancements in Windows Server 2008 and fully supports Windows Server 2003. This enables existing Windows Server 2003 customers to immediately deploy Windows Server 2008 into their existing XenApp environments in any mix.
– Pricing and Availability
XenApp 5 will be available September 10, 2008. For North America, suggested retail pricing is per concurrent user (CCU) and includes one year of Subscription Advantage:
* Advanced Edition – US $350
* Enterprise Edition – US $450
* Platinum Edition – US $600
Current customers with Subscription Advantage can upgrade at no additional charge. Standalone pricing for client-side application streaming and virtualization begins as low as $60 per CCU.
