I’m just back from Citrix Summit and Synergy that was held in Las Vegas last week.  It has been amazing to see the transformation that Citrix has made the last 18 months or so in their product offerings and direction.  Before that time, they seemed to be a sinking ship as their flagship product Presentation Server was losing ground as Microsoft added more and more functionality to Terminal Services.  They seemed to grasp for straws by buying some strange companies (Ardence) and developing some seemingly unneeded applications (Easycall).  Even when they bought XenSource, I was wondering what, if any, plan they had.

Now, it seems as though most of those purchases were very smart and very strategic.  The complete solution they now offer with XenServer, XenDesktop, XenApp and Provisioning Server is very compelling.  It seems as though no one out there has such a comprehensive, feature-rich solution.  They are completely focused on the virtualized environment of the future.  The fact that they are now beginning to offer their physical appliances as virtual appliances just goes to show how commited they are to the vision.  You can always criticize them for their bad habit of changing product names, but you can’t criticize their vision.