Mark Templeton Covers Lots of Ground at Citrix Synergy
During his Wednesday keynote here at Citrix Synergy, president and CEO Mark Templeton made it clear that when it comes to virtualization and cloud computing, his company has the capabilities necessary for customers to optimize their experiences across unified personal, private and public clouds. He also announced new and upgraded products designed to fulfill his transformational vision of future computing.
After lauding Citrix's formal acquisition of Kaviza and praising his company's time-tested relationship with Microsoft, which is getting tighter as the two vendors align their technology stacks and go-to-market plan, he described two major pain points that the IT industry has to overcome in order to realize its full potential, followed by a call to arms. The first pain point is single-digit IT growth, while the second was the stifling of innovation by entrenched organizations that are "making it difficult to change."
On the upside, Templeton praised the consumerization of IT, and the liberating effects it provides for grass roots users who are taking control of their computing futures and moving toward the simplicity and self-choice that characterized the PC revolution of the early 80s.
"This is the most remarkably powerful force since the PC put the same kind of pressure on the mainframe," he said, adding that despite the massive proliferation of portable computing devices, "We don't think we're in the post-PC era at all. When it comes to consumerization, we're going to feature it, not fight it."
After announcing that TD Bank had won the Citrix Innovation Award, Templeton cited how personal clouds can be flashpoints for good and bad trends, and how the cost of ownership goes up if users dislike the features of their computing environments. As he put it, easy and simple produces a lower TCO.
"If I was the czar of computing, I would make one law: No more IT projects that require training," he asserted.
The CEO praised XenClient, saying there have been 100,000 downloads of the product during the past year. Then he announced XenClient 2, which is optimized for local, virtualized desktops, and XenClient XT, which is targeted at "severe" computing environments with "extreme" security requirements that need for very high performance.
Turning his attention to Citrix Receiver, he said that at last count, the device supported 149 smartphones, 37 tablets and 10 thin-client devices, along with thousands of PCs and Macs. He also announced Citrix Receiver for the Web, which works with any browser and is optimized for Google environments.
Other new products unveiled: NetScaler Cloud Gateway, which features single sign-on, user provisioning and strong SaaS compatibility, and NetScaler Cloud Bridge, created to enhance and secure the movement of data between private and public clouds. On the topic of public clouds, Templeton, who is not known for taking shots at VMware, said "By using server virtualization, you are not building a public cloud."
Citrix's relationship with Rackspace was highlighted when Templeton announced his company's participation in "Citrix Project Olympus," which will feature XenServer working with the rapidly growing OpenStack, developed by Rackspace. An early-access program for that project is currently open.
In the end, he promulgated something of a transformational manifesto that called for device and network independence, inclusional, as opposed to exclusionary security, and elastic services available at variable costs.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/26/2011 at 12:48 PM