Citrix has announced that they are reinstating the XenApp product line again. XenApp a household name for some 6-7 years with Citrix, got a name change in June 2013 with the release of XenDesktop 7. Formerly called XenDesktop 7 App Edition, it now is XenApp 7.5 and XenDesktop 7.5 as the name. Well, that is not quite the truth though, although it’s called XenApp it is still running the XenDesktop FMA architecture. So, there will not be any flashback of IMA, and that is a good thing in my perspective. So, XenApp 7.5 will feature the same console as XenDesktop 7.5(Studio), which is good. It will have the FMA architecture, which is good, but here is the part that gets tricky. There is still no 100% upgrade path…why? Because, it’s a new build architecture, and that’s okay, since you do not want to do a in place upgrade anyways…   

New Citrix XenApp 7.5 makes it simple to deliver any Windows app to an increasingly mobile workforce, while leveraging the cost saving and elasticity of hybrid clouds and the security of mobile device management.

What’s new:

• The full power of AppDNA is now included with XenApp – AppDNA reduces the time to virtualize apps for mobile delivery by automating the labor required to test and re-mediate applications by up to 90%, saving thousands of person- hours during application migrations and on-going lifecycle management.
• HDX Mobile Technology. Speed the time to deploy corporate applications to mobile devices by securely hosting and then optimizing existing applications to be used by tablets and smartphones by taking advantage of new HDX mobile technology.
• EdgeSight user experience monitoring built-in to Director and integrated with NetScaler HDX Insights ensuring critical performance data capture without putting additional load on the network.
• Provisioning to cloud infrastructure – Only XenDesktop can provision application or desktop workloads to private or public cloud infrastructure alongside a traditional virtual infrastructure deployment.
• Any cloud – Support through Amazon Web Services or any Citrix Cloud Platform-based public cloud or a private cloud built with Citrix Cloud Platform. Support through Windows Azure will be available in the future.

WebInterface

Citrix has extended the support for WebInterface! Yes, WI is back as well! No need to upgrade to StoreFront anytime soon, take your time, plan it. Aggregate all of your existing XenApp Farms, including XenApp 7.5 and XenDesktop 7.5. Oh yeah, and earlier versions of XenDesktop, including XenDesktop 7.0+7.1 are not supported. 

With this announcement, Citrix has the next generation of the Citrix XenApp product is line for us, the market-leading app virtualization solution. As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, businesses are struggling with how to deliver core Windows apps to an ever wider variety of devices. While re-architecting and re-writing these apps for mobile platforms may take months or years, customers can use XenApp to mobilize Windows apps today and deliver a native, high-performance, multi-touch-enabled experience as a result of the latest enhancements to Citrix HDX technologies.

In addition, enterprise IT can now burst and grow their virtual applications to the cloud in real-time with hybrid cloud provisioning, built into the new simplified and streamlined XenApp management console. With out-of-the-box support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and CloudPlatform powered by Apache CloudStack clouds, and Microsoft Azure cloud support under development, XenApp is the only solution that can be easily deployed both in the cloud and on-premises with the same management interfaces and skillsets. This offers IT an unprecedented ability to reduce capital expenditures by leveraging the elasticity of the world’s largest public clouds. All these capabilities enable the new XenApp 7.5 to dramatically reduce the costs and complexity of virtualizing Windows apps and helping to drive the Citrix vision of the mobile workspace to securely deliver apps, desktops, files and services seamlessly to any user, on any device, over any network. Driving Down Cost and Complexity The new XenApp 7.5 is built on the FlexCast Management Architecture used in the Citrix XenDesktop® solution (also announced today), which provides a single console from which customers can deliver both virtual apps and desktops.

Competitors that can only deliver entire virtual desktops often force users to open multiple desktops just to access apps that conflict with each other or run on different versions of Windows. With 25 years of delivering virtual apps to 330,000 customers, XenApp allows users to simply see a selection of available apps at their disposal. These apps might originate from any of five generations of Windows, all hosted and managed from the same infrastructure.

XenApp Platinum edition now includes the full power of Citrix AppDNA application migration technology, which can reduce time and overhead of application virtualization and platform migrations by as much as 90 percent. The inclusion of all the AppDNA capabilities helps IT address a variety of migration issues, including how to virtualize applications ahead of Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 end-of-life milestones. Leveraging the Elasticity of Public Clouds XenApp 7.5 provides the ability for hybrid cloud provisioning directly to AWS or CloudPlatform-powered clouds without having to learn new management consoles and skillsets. This allows customers to instantly add new capacity to handle seasonal requirements, address incremental growth, and add on-demand capacity for disaster recovery or business continuity. Unlike competitors, XenApp supports an “any cloud” strategy and does not lock customers into a proprietary cloud, but instead allows them to leverage any of the large public clouds on the market. Initially, hybrid cloud provisioning will be supported for AWS or any CloudPlatform-powered public or private cloud. Over time, new support will be added including the previously announced support for Windows Azure cloud platform.

Delivering a True Mobile Experience To ensure a true mobile experience of Windows apps, enabling them to function intuitively and transparently on mobile devices, XenApp includes Citrix HDX Mobile. HDX Mobile optimizes Windows apps for mobile devices including touch-enabled smartphones and tablets. It enhances performance by intelligently coping with the variability and packet loss of mobile networks and improving graphics and multimedia with hardware acceleration on tablets and smartphones. With the HDX Mobile SDK, developers can completely transform Windows apps into mobile-native experiences by re-factoring the look and feel and enabling multi-touch gestures, native menu controls, camera and GPS support from within the virtual app. Extending Security to Mobile Devices For a limited time, XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum edition customers can add mobile device management (MDM) or enterprise mobile management (EMM) capabilities at a discount.

The Platinum Mobility Promotion enables these customers to get Citrix XenMobile MDM edition for the price of Software Maintenance, or XenMobile Enterprise edition at a 20 percent discount off the product price. This offer expires September 30, 2014; restrictions apply.

Availability

XenApp 7.5 will be available in March 2014.

 

 

Check out this video for more info…

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