Table of Content
- Keynote of Citrix Synergy
- Other interesting sessions from Citrix Synergy
- SYN213: Optimizing VDI and RDS performance and scalability
- SYN214: Tips and best practices for getting the best from your Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment
- SYN216: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops tech update
- SYN218: How to protect your Citrix Workspace
- SYN215: Performance and scalability tips and tricks from Citrix experts
- Wrap up
Last week Citrix had their yearly event Citrix Synergy hosted in sunny Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. These tech conferences are very valuable to get educated about the latest products, best practices and experiences from the field, and to network with fellow peers. This blog post will focus on some interesting presentations from this year event.
Keynote of Citrix Synergy
Lets first start with the opening keynote from Citrix Synergy. There are a lot of great writeups from the keynote but these are my personal highlight. For a complete overview, I recommend to watch the 2-hour keynote or check the blog post from Jack at BrianMadden.com.
It is clear within the opening keynote Citrix is really focusing on modern ways of working, or how Citrix is calling it, Citrix Workspace intelligent experience. The intelligent workspace is providing work in a feed format, like Facebook or Twitter, where employees can quickly clear tasks by using “micro applications”. These “micro applications” are tasks and workflows integrated into other systems. This way tasks like approving expenses or submitting time off can be done in a couple simple clicks without leaving the Workspace.
Another highlight is the integration with Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktops on Azure. Citrix Cloud customers can combine Citrix Cloud with Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure. Once the Windows Virtual Desktop is fully available Citrix will offer day-1 support.
The keynote did contain a risky statement regarding performance compared to VMware Horizon BlastExtreme. According to Citrix, they have seen up to 89% difference in cost to run VMware Horizon BlastExterme compared to Citrix HDX on the same platform. During the keynote, no source was shared so personally, I’m very curious how this is measured. This would be perfect research for the research platform, GO-EUC.
During the keynote, Google Cloud was on the stage where Citrix emphasize the partnership with Google. Citrix is integrating with the most common public cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud. However, I did notice Citrix states Google is the best in the cloud. Within the EUC workspace, especially in Europe, Google is not really adopted as the cloud provider for these kinds of workloads. I’m personally interested in how this evolves within Europe.
Other interesting sessions from Citrix Synergy
There are a lot of sessions at Citrix Synergy but these are my personal highlights which are valuable for the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments.
SYN213: Optimizing VDI and RDS performance and scalability
Getting a good user experience is always very important at my customers. This session by Martin Zugec and Rob Zylowski explains how to approach VDI and RDS operating system optimization to achieve customer goals including fast logons, superior user experience, and high host density.
SYN214: Tips and best practices for getting the best from your Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment
When building environment best practices form the field are extremely valuable. This session from Dennis Span, David Wilkinson and George Spiers answer the most common questions heard in the field, from how to configure Profile Management policies to how to support Office 365 users in Cached Exchange Mode. We will be discussing best practices around Profile Management, Windows 10 optimization, Windows Server 2016 optimization, Citrix App Layering, Office 365, Google Chrome, and more.
SYN216: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops tech update
Each release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops comes with new features and improvements. This session by Mayank Singh and Thomas Berger provides an update with the latest technical advancements in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, including some interesting performance result from Login VSI and GO-EUC.
SYN218: How to protect your Citrix Workspace
Security is a hot topic and with all the day to day threats you need to ensure the workspace secure. This session by Patrick Coble covers the security best practices for Citrix Workspace deployments with practical ways to secure the infrastructure using multiple techniques from Citrix, Microsoft, and other solutions.
SYN215: Performance and scalability tips and tricks from Citrix experts
I don’t often promote my own session but to be honest I’m very proud of this presentation. Together with Eltjo van Gulik we provided interesting performance results regarding Citrix Cloud, Visual Quality profiles, Citrix scalability templates, Citrix Optimizer, and Citrix VDA’s versions.
Wrap up
These are just a couple sessions from Citrix Synergy 2019. All of the sessions are recorded and available on Youtube right here. Do you think there are other interesting sessions? Please share them in the comments below.
Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash
