Alternative Networks : Citrix Summit 2016: Day Two

On the first day of Summit, Citrix shared its focus for the year ahead and communicated its plan to further enhance its lead over the competition, and sustain its position on a global scale. The second day of the conference provided the evidence to validate that Citrix has the people, technology and focus to do just that.

The day's cutting edge Netscaler (Citrix's Application delivery controller) demo has to be one of the highlights so far. From the scene setting story Citrix's VP & CTO, Citrix Abhishek Chauhan told about trying to tell his eight year old son a scary story, in which the monsters had no impact whatsoever, but instead the scary bit that got the reaction started with his son waking up one morning to find that the internet was down. The desired effect and key message was of course the fear of not being able to function as per usual.

'Millennials' has been a term used excessively at Summit, and it references those born post 1980 who have been brought up almost wholly reliant on technology. With everything we access now on 'the other side of a line', it is indeed terrifying to imagine how one can cope if access to the other side is denied.

This demo played across the entire Citrix story: a XenApp session accessing a published Skype for Business application, with the use of a HD real-time optimisation pack to make a call to a remote location seamlessly and securing using SD WAN technology. The demo began by leveraging a MPLS network and broadband to achieve a very high quality video call.

But then, Abhishek Chauhan had some 'cutting edge' technology of his own. Taking to the stage to physically cut through primary MPLS cable. Usually this would end the call… but not today. Instead it defaulted immediately to the broadband with minimal difference in quality.

The next victim was the broadband cable, and remarkably the call continued, this time defaulting seamlessly to the 4G network. There's nothing better than a live, physical illustration to demonstrate the usually intangible and often unimaginable, and this was powerful and really quite cool. It resonated across the conference and hit home that this solution is becoming increasingly important in the workplace as more and more of what we need is accessed via connectivity.

Another highlight for me was the evident strength of Citrix's alliance with Microsoft and how it will allow us to do even more great things with Windows 10, Skype for Business, Azure, and Server 2016. With 200 million active devices running Windows 10 and a 140% faster growth trajectory than Windows 7, Windows 10 becomes important to work with technology vendors that play together nicely and Citrix and Microsoft very much do just that.

Here are some of the updates from the day:

• Microsoft Corporate VP, Brad Anderson, Bill Burley, Citrix Corporate VP and Acting GM, announced a year-long collaboration between our companies that has now culminated in the 2.0 release of the XenApp/XenDesktop HDX RealTime Optimization Pack for Microsoft Skype® for Business.
• Jesse Lipson showcased how we're advancing the platform with updates to how Workspace Cloud is priced, discounted, and sold.
• Citrix introduced two new Technology Previews to make provisioning simpler and faster: Citrix AppDisk and Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS)

Citrix Summit 2016 provided important Citrix product updates, strategic announcements and innovations designed to help secure your apps and data and collaborate from anywhere.

As a Citrix Platinum Partner with specialisations in mobility, virtualisation and networking for data centre, Alternative is committed to making sure you're up to date with all of the developments.

Click the button below to view the agenda and register your place on our update events over the coming weeks: