Citrix Systems Inc. is creating a suite of products and services designed to take advantage of the next iteration of Microsoft’s server platform.Citrix has been working on a product set tentatively called Constellation for several years, said Scott Herren, vice-president of the company’s access management group.
Herren, who spoke at the company’s annual user conference iForum, supplied only a few details about what the products might look like, but they could start to appear sometime next year. So far Constellation comprises four initiatives: an autonomic load management tool, a system health monitor, a graphics accelerator and a policy manager.
The latter, codenamed Iris, will record keystrokes and mouseclicks in order to determine what causes common computing errors. When Iris recognizes a series of keystrokes or clicks that could lead to a problem, it will automatically warn the system administrator that there may be an impending issue to resolve. The system could also be used for security purposes and initiate a lockdown or be used to help a firm meet accounting or privacy compliance regulations.
New SKU
The Constellation tools in development may be issued as separate SKUs or could be bundled with other products, or may simply be features within future releases of existing products, he said.
Citrix has undergone a transformation this year, ditching its best known brand name Metaframe and reorganizing product groups. Its flagship product is now known as Presentation Server. Citrix announced version 4.0 of the application virtualization tool in June and company CEO Mark Templeton took the wraps off a 64-bit version of the product during his opening keynote address at iForum.
Enterprises are struggling to keep up with the demands of running IT shops with limited resources, said Templeton. “At the same time, the expectations of your users are changing and increasing.
The 64-bit version of Presentation Server 4.0 is designed to make the most of Microsoft Server 2003, said Templeton, and supports three times as many users as the 32-bit version running on a Server 2000 environment.
The term “64-bit” may be on everyone’s lips these days, but the technology has been available for Unix for decades, said IDC analyst Dan Kuznetsky. The difference today is that 64-bit is “now available as industry standards.”
Kuznetsky acknowledged that 64-bit systems “could be useful tools” but cautioned that “we’re doing things the same way, we’re just trying to mash them all in one box to make them appear simpler.”
Herren described the difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit Presentation Server as a “a quantum leap”.