Microsoft Ignite & Citrix Partnership

Microsoft and Citrix have always had a strong partnership, somewhat down to both parties driving each other's business and being dependent on each other’s unique offering.  Citrix has always driven Microsoft adoption of the server based operating system, then in more recent years also driving the adoption of modern desktop operating systems (that may not have run efficiently on current hardware) securely within the data centre as part of a VDI solution.

It should be noted that Citrix is one of the biggest workloads running on the Microsoft platform, in most cases customers will be running multiple Citrix servers (including management and workload hosts) usually equating to more than 10 hosts. Nothing else within an environment usually requires this level of resource, therefore this is a large opportunity to explore when exploring migrating to cloud.  However it should be noted that this is not another version of vAlliance, this time the integration has been properly thought, with little to no integration dependencies preventing one of the other solutions from upgrading. Below is some of the recent announcements from Ignite based on the Citrix Partnership. 

O365 – Optimised Skype for Business Experience

Citrix and Microsoft have worked on developing an updated HDX RealTime Optimisation Pack for Skype for Business on XenApp and XenDesktop.  This provides Citrix users with a fully native experience with uncompromised quality of voice and video by optimising the delivery of media through intelligent offloading, especially for video processing which is CPU intensive.  This will provide the ability to host audio and video conferencing facilities from within a secure hosted session.

Citrix XenApp 7.11 will support Windows Server 2016 from the day of its release.  Windows Server 2016 is supported both for XenApp hosts and management servers for XenApp and XenDesktop.  To further build on this, Citrix also includes full support for Azure Resource Manager in XenApp and XenDesktop through Machine Creation Services.

Integration will be introduced within NetScaler to provide further functionality to EMS users.  Citrix NetScaler will integrate with EMS to provide virtual private network capabilities for more secure, identity-based access to on-premises applications on Microsoft Intune-managed devices. This will give customers a broad array of options for managing access to on-premises applications.  In addition, the Citrix Worx Mail and Forms applications, ShareFile enterprise file share and sync and Citrix Receiver will support EMS so that customers can manage and secure these mobile app experiences using the same mobile application management capabilities used to manage Office 365 apps.

Through Citrix Cloud, Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise (Current Branch for Business) customers whom license on a per-user basis will have the option to manage their Windows 10 images within Azure.  Citrix Cloud enables customers to move the Citrix control plane to a hosted and managed service with the Windows 10 virtual machine hosts being located within Azure.  This facilities customers with deploying virtual applications and desktops and accelerate Windows 10 adoption for those customers who are using Microsoft cloud solutions.  

XenApp Express: Fastest way to Deliver Windows Apps in Azure

With the deprecation of Azure RemoteApp from Microsoft’s cloud offerings, XenApp Express from Citrix will enable customers to migrate to a similar platform for hosting applications within Microsoft Azure.  Citrix XenApp Express leverages Microsoft Azure and Citrix Cloud technologies to provide a simple and more feature-rich offering. Current users of RemoteApp can be migrated directly to XenApp Express with minimal disruption to end users, and will be able to select from a set of existing template server images or upload a custom template with specific applications 

Final Note

Coming soon, Ultima will be hosting an UltimaTV special panel, hosted by Colin Prime-Moore (CTO) and will be joined by members of Microsoft and Citrix to answer the questions regarding Citrix in Microsoft Azure. If you would like to post a question to this panel, click on the button below.