Citrix Synergy 2014 Day 1 Keynote

May 06, 2014

Written by Brian Ducharme

After a quick breakfast in the pressroom we headed down to get our prime seating at the Day 1 Keynote for the 25th Citrix Synergy event. As the Hall began to fillup, Synergy TV did some interviews and behind-the-scenes looks at what goes into making this event such a success year after year.

They started with "The iBand" playing a few songs using ipads and other mobile devices to rock live on the stage. They did experience a little lag at some points during the performance but not bad for doing it live.

At 9am the Keynote kicked off with with Mark Templeton (CEO of Citrix) taking the stage dancing and lip syncing to “Happy” by Pherrel Williams. Mark started by announcing the following:

81 Sponsors of Synergy this year, 10,000 registered attendees, 300 hours of sessions, 66 countries.
Partnership around Intel, HP and Citrix.
Ultimate Mobile Device = You
Innovation Awards: Autodesk, Taco, Westpac Bank and BT Global Services were nominated.
Autodesk wins the Innovation Award.
1.4 Million business-ready desktops delivered by CSPs, SIs, ISVs and Solution Advisors
100 Infrastructure CSPs

Next up was Neil Lock – BT Global Services Director, BT Computer

Built most globally diverse choice of cloud services delivered in 12 months and delivered locally.
300% growth as a service provider.
BT Compute Managed Services has 4 parts – Cloud Solutions, Brokering & Cloud Aggregation, Cloud Infrastructure, and Cloud Enabling.

Next Mark Templeton took the stage and talked about the BT relationship:

FileShare – 45,000 business customers and went from zero to 1 Million licenses in less than a 18 months.
With 2 Customers with more than 75,000 employees.
Mark shared a story about a vault in Iraq where the enemy tried to break into a vault and used every explosive in their arsenal to try and breach it with no success. A team later calculated that if they had just changed their point of view by 90 degrees they would have been able to enter the vault with only 10% of the explosives that they used. Point being - Looking at things with a different point of view is important.
Mark gave us a flashback to him in Engineering school and discussed what .
Mobile Workspace – productivity and agility for people, business and IT.
People don't join organizations - Organizations join people
Citrix Receiver comes in 3 flavors
- Apps – Native apps (Mac, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone)
- Browser – Safari, Chrome, iE, Firefox
- Appliances – TCO and Agility (like AppleTV)

Video from Google – Ahmed speaks about BYOD and chromebooks and about working closely with Citrix to bring you joint innovation.

Chrome OS Receiver – Tech Preview Q3'2014 will enable Printing, USB, clipboard, touch, webcam and 2-way audio.

Next Marcel Calef – Senior Software Engineer, gave a Demo of a 3D application using the local GPU for rendering on a Virtual Desktop. He also mentioned that Citrix is in the process of converting from DirectX to OpenGL so that it can work on Mac clients.

MACs are becoming a bigger part of the BYOD market.

Citrix Receiver release X1 – Putting Experience First. One touch access to your mobile workspace.

Unified backend infrastructure with HDX & MDX support with new UX architecture.
Customize – your Branding
Dynamic – New smart categories, device and role context.

Richard Hayton – Receiver Architect & Magician gives a demo of the new Citrix Receiver release.

Connecting People that have tasks to do with the apps and data that they need to complete the task. This is what we are trying to do.

Problem – How do you provide Experience first in a world of hybrid devices and services.

Answer – Don't own Stuff as a strategic idea and focus on the services that connect them.

Next they showed a video about a winery and how they are using receiver. Unfortunately it was in spanish and the subtitles where down too low on the screens for anyone to see them from where they were seated.

Steve Daheb, CMO
(http://www.citrix.com/about/executives/steve-daheb.html)

Started with the Cloud, next came mobile and now we are in the age of experience, where performance and connectivity is important.

Steve talked about how everything is tied together to create an exceptional user experience in the mobile workspace.

Apps Data Collaboration

Next up was Catherine Courage - SVP, Customer Experience
(http://www.citrix.com/about/executives/catherine-courage.html)

Anticipate | Empower | Seamless

The Workspace Experience Demo

Brad Peterson – Senior Director Business Development, Chief Demo Officer
Worx has added Mail & Calendar integration that allows you to join a meeting by dialin with just one touch (automatically dials and enters the meeting pin). Also has Running Late which allows you to open an email addressed to everyone invited to the meeting to let them know you are running late.
WorxNote preview – Capture, Store and Share notes. Notes can capture text, photo and audio and store to FileShare.
ShareFile – integrates with Dropbox to allow you to move items from Dropbox into the private ShareFile area allowing you to separate “personal” vs. “business” data.
WorxDesktop – Allows you to connect to a remote computer and edit documents remotely from an iPad. Allows you to run non-native applications on any device.

Steve Daheb talks about the key components of the workspace.

XenDesktop
XenApp 7.5
- Demo from Brad Peterson shows an application from Autodesk running on a beefy remote server delivered to both a chromebook and an ipad with no change in UX using XenApp.
XenMobile 9
WorxNote | WorxDesktop | WorxEdit available in Tech Preview
ShareFile
NetScaler 10.5 announced
- 5x improveent in mobile app performance
- Deep visibility into mobile network traffic
TriScale 2.0
Workspace Suite released and available today
- Trade-up Promotion 70% savings
- 50% off for VMware Horizon & View customers

To finish out the keynote an emotional Mark Templeton took the stage once again and discussed the history of Citrix and where it's going in the future.

1989 to 2014

Remote Access > Virtualization > Networking > Collaboration > Cloud > Mobile Workstyles

2014 to future

Device & network independence
Any to any, secure by design
Consumer-like

Culture + Empathy

Leaving the world a better place than the way we found it.

Citrix Workspace Services using Microsoft Azure

Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President Cloud Services talks about the partnership between Microsoft and Citrix.

Mitch Parker, GM and VP Workspace Services group

First look at Citrix Workspace Services - Browser Login

Last modified on May 07, 2014

Published in Citrix Synergy 2014

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Brian Ducharme

Brian is an event reporter for VMBlog.com and an expert in virtualization/cloud techonlogies. In his 15+ years of experience in the virtualization/cloud field he has interviewed hundreds of companies, users and executives. Brian has been an active member of the NEVMUG (NEVTUG) since 2006 and attends both vmworld and Citrix Synergy every year. Brian works full time as a Senior Software Engineer for Liquidware Labs.

Brian also spent 5 years as the managing editor of Virtual Strategy Magazine, an online magazine focused on the virtualization industry and has been with vmblog since 2011. He has a background in Computer Graphics, Marketing, Programming, Web Design, Mobile App Development, Linux Administration and is an active member of the NHJS group.