Citrix Summit 2014 in Orlando Florida is approaching fast. Just a few more weeks before the Welcome Reception, including the Solutions Expo, at the Hyatt Regency (Regency Ballroom) officially kicks off next years Summit event. Since I don’t like last minute arrangements I took some time to figure out what I need to take with me, MacBook, paper notebook, clothing (I’m counting on 80F, around 26 celsius, average :-) hotel voucher, tickets, passport etc… stuff like that. About a month ago I also figured out my conference schedule, the opening key-note, multiple break-out sessions, the Expo, perhaps a walk-in hands-on session and I also scheduled the 1Y0-400 exam to, hopefully, earn my CCE-AD certification. See my full schedule further on, I fine tuned it last week.
Microsoft’s Windows XP is hot! Read why.
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. This may sound a bit weird to some, but Microsoft’s Windows XP is hot! Perhaps not as hot as it was when it was first released, but it’s not far of. Unfortunately not in a good way. Next year, in April 2014 to be exact, Microsoft Windows XP will no longer be officially supported. During this article I’d like to explore the end of life concept, what we can do to prevent potential issues and have a look at some of the possible migration and or upgrade scenarios we have at our disposal. Is it time to dump those fat clients? Adopt VDI? DaaS or Hosted Shared Desktops perhaps? Let’s see what’s out there.
Citrix XenMobile (8.6) revisited
Just four months after Citrix released XenMobile 8.5 they’re now on the verge of launching version 8.6, I know, it’s hard to keep up. During this Blog I’d like to point out some of the new features and possibilities that version 8.6 will bring to the table, as announced by Citrix. At the same time I’d like to spend a minute discussing the device enrolment process when using MDM and have a closer look at the Worx enabled apps concept as well, including the MDX technology involved, since this tends to confuse people from time to time.
A closer look at the Cloud, based on Server 2012 R2
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. Let’s continue where we left off. Windows server 2012 R2 has been available as a tech preview download as of June 2013 and was officially released on October 18, 2013, together with Windows 8.1. It’s now more enterprise-class, application-focused and cloud-oriented than ever. High-performance multi-tenant storage, software-defined networking, and multiple VDI and RDP enhancements are some of the new and improved technologies that have been included in the R2 release.
Mobility based on Windows Server 2012 R2
This article was originally written as a guest blogger for intense School IT educational services. Since I already discussed BYOD in general and, more specifically, I talked about Citrix XenMobile (see my previous article “BYOD…Beyond the Hype“ I thought it might be a good idea to have a look at some of the daily challenges we face when it comes to securely accessing our corporate data and applications, especially when mobile devices come into play, and to see what Microsoft has to offer as part of its new Windows Server 2012 R2 release to help us overcome some of these challenges.
Citrix Summit… Just the tip of the iceberg
Last week I got some great news, next year I will attend Citrix Summit in Orlando Florida! I just found out a few days ago but I already made all arrangements, I bought my plane tickets, booked my hotel en registered for the event itself, in short, I’m ready to go… Just another 109 days to go from here. I will be there the whole week, 8 days in total to be exact, so I can also do some, not much though, sight seeing. I’ve never been to the ‘Sates’ before so I’m really looking forward to the experience. A special thank you to Qwise.nl for making this possible.
A first look at Citrix Byte Squared
This week Citrix announced the acquisition of Byte Squared a.k.a. Byte². Another (big?) step forward in their mobile communication strategy. Citrix and Byte Squared, powering mobile productivity, as they stated on their Blog. I decided to check out their website to see if I could find out some more detailed information, which I did.
The Citrix CloudGateway
Cloud computing… A bunch of computing resources delivering some kind of service over the network, typically being the Internet. It includes, or should include, on demand self-service capabilities like: requesting access to certain applications and data, automated account provisioning or perhaps the ability to manage your own VM’s. It’s hot and everybody wants a piece! Services like Google Apps, Amazon cloud drive and Microsoft’s Azure, to name a few, are examples that do just that. These are the cloud solutions often referred to when the Cloud hype gets mentioned. But what about an on-premises solution, building your own private cloud which can be safely accessed from anywhere?!