Since I posted an article on Citrix XenApp last week, I figured I'd go ahead and follow up with a quick recap of the Citrix Synergy 2011 San Francisco event. I spent a good bit of time watching a firehouse of video replay content.  There are 80 some odd videos covering an array of topics.  If you are interested in the business of Cloud, from an enabling technology vendor, I'd recommend at least watching the Keynotes.

In particular, they talk about their "3 PC Era" strategy, vs "End of the PC Era" strategy, maybe a slight jab at Steve Jobs & Apple.  I fundamentally agree with it, and it fits nicely into the NIST et al Cloud Framework that I subscribe to here.  The strategy also paves the way for "Total Value of Ownership" vs. "Total Cost of Ownership" and a number of Key AEC Industry issues like disparate job sites, mobility, offline work, etc…

Dig deeper and there are a few high level dives into a few of the Citrix products that are adding value to the Citrix ecosystem & XenApp focus that I posted last week.  At a minimum, get a peek at the "App Store" concept via iPad/Tablet based Citrix Receiver as well as BIM and other traditionally graphics intensive apps running on a virtual XenClient session.

Continuing on, there is a clever overview of the Citrix NetScaler Cloud Gateway, which provides the evolution of at least one answer to the Cloud aggregation dilemma.  Another compelling demo along the IT twist is the cloud fabric discussion a la NetScaler Cloud Bridge.  Essentially this lets you seemlessly leverage public cloud resources like servers, storage, etc...

Last and pretty key, they cap this off with a one of the most interesting bits for Service Provider Partners, like My Company, doing a joint presentation with RackSpace to announce the evolution of the OpenStack Open Source Cloud infrastructure management specification (get your head around that) called Project Olympus.

These are not the only way to achieve these goals, and from the looks of it not the least expensive, but all pretty slick and interesting to soak in.  I'll get into these individual concepts more in the future.

They'll take a couple hours to watch, or a cup of coffee to scrub though which is surprisingly fast.  Kudos to Citrix TV on the delivery.  BTW, if you skip to video 4, you get the recap of it all and the list of 5 things they want you to do, other than open the wallet!

Hit the link below…and then Search for "2011 SF Keynote", that did the trick for me.

http://www.citrix.com/tv/

Enjoy!