Take 2 Minutes to Think Differently with Citrix
If you can spare two minutes, Citrix would like to offer a fresh approach
For IT decision makers, business is currently a challenge. Budget cuts, project delays and job losses are scattered throughout daily conversations - how about reusing your existing IT investment in a different way to better support the business?
THE REALITY CHECK
With your budgets reducing and surplus technology a thing of the past, it's difficult to make more savings without eating into core areas of IT. The unrelenting pressure to cut spending while ensuring you do not negatively impact long-term business growth is tough to balance.
All of this is happening as user expectations are reaching an all time high, driven by a new generation of workers and customers who grew up with the instant, personalised, on-demand world of the Web as their model of what computing should be like. To make things worse, the volume of application types, user devices and locations IT is expected to support are vast.
Here's what you already know:
- The cost and complexity of distributed computing has gone through the roof
- Throwing more servers, bandwidth and networking equipment at the problem isn't working
- Your business depends on applications
Clearly, it is time to think and act differently.
REDEFINING CITRIX
Citrix has a long track record of reducing costs and simplifying IT. Today, Citrix deliver such benefits from the data centre to desktops with their application delivery infrastructure system - Citrix Delivery Center. It combines XenDesktop, XenApp, XenServer and NetScaler to transform your existing IT investments into an on-demand service by integrating network optimisation with application, desktop and server virtualisation.
SERVER VIRTUALISATION
Did you know XenServer is free? Citrix have made enterprise-class server virtualisation available at no cost. XenServer is NOT a basic hypervisor of which many, including Citrix's own, have been free for years. It has enterprise features such as centralised multi-node management, unlimited servers and virtual machines, native Windows and Linux support, live motion, multi-server resource sharing and core storage management - capabilities which other vendors can charge you thousands of pounds per server for.
Let's look at how XenServer could fit within your organisation depending on where you are with virtualisation:
You're relatively new to server virtualisation and cannot take risks given current budget constraints?
Not a problem. Realise efficiencies and cost savings of virtualisation without any upfront costs and be in a position to move to advanced management features as needed.
You've already made significant investment in a more expensive virtualisation platform?
Choice is imperative so if you are upgrading or expanding existing deployments, you have a proven enterprise-class alternative to consider with Citrix.
You're using Citrix XenApp and wondering how XenServer fits?
By combing two products within the Citrix Delivery Center, you can increase your flexibility and consolidate your physical XenApp servers with virtually no overhead.
Furthermore, Citrix has recently built on their 20-year relationship with Microsoft. If you wish to pursue server virtualisation via Windows and Microsoft Server virtualisation solutions, Citrix launched Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V in February 2009, offering advanced management capabilities to help you create scalable, manageable and agile virtual infrastructures.
DESKTOP VIRTUALISATION -
THE NEXT GENERATION
While new technologies may be on the back burner, Gartner has suggested we should all "prepare for dramatic changes in desktop computing". XenDesktop already makes it possible for workers to feel as though they have a new, personalised PC every time they log on.
Citrix is transforming the economics of desktop computing while meeting user experience expectations. Only XenDesktop delivers on all levels for desktop virtualisation:
- High definition user experience - a PC-like user experience delivered equally well to headquarters, branch offices, homes or public wireless networks without requiring any specialised hardware or chipsets
- Service level assurance - your desktop administrators need the ability to monitor performance, not just server metrics, with built in monitoring, proactive alerts and dashboard views
- Single image management - to achieve the significant cost savings, you'll need the ability to manage all desktops from a single image through the use of provisioning services. Single image management and provisioning should not come at the expense of personalisation thanks to built-in profile management and role-based application delivery, thus dynamically assembling a desktop for each user
- Application management - no desktop virtualisation project will succeed without a methodology for delivering applications into the environment. It needs to be able centrally to manage a single instance of each application workload, deliver applications based on user roles, provide granular, policy-based access control and via streaming or hosting
- Open architecture - you need choice and flexibility to leverage the latest technological advancements, not proprietary solutions which restrict you
MAKING 'IT' A STRATEGIC INVESTMENT
IT is a critical component to success in the new economy. You now need to regroup and decide how to prioritise and deliver IT to the business with less staff and smaller budgets. The following five strategies will best equip you:
- Simplification not stagnation - while it makes sense to adopt a back to basics approach to IT spend, organisations should not stop innovating at the expense of longer-term business strategy. For example, Gartner has demonstrated between 80-90% of server capacity is going unused at any given time ... Not the kind of thing you want your CFO or CEO to be seeing if you hope to survive in 2009
- Focus on the environment - resist the urge to shelve green initiatives - there has never been a better time for them. Consolidating server space and simplifying operating environments through virtualisation are just two ways in which energy savings can be achieved alongside productivity improvements
- Consider the overall value of projects - cost cutting decisions often seem to make sense in the short term, but such decisions should aim to deliver competitive positioning or strategic value once the recession is over
- Protect your data - the importance of data security for organisations cannot be underestimated, especially in recessionary times. With changes in staffing levels, you must ensure it doesn't equal the loss of information that may be crucial to the business, particularly in heavily regulated markets. Storing and managing information centrally is the key
- Consider the total cost of running your business - take a fresh look at the costs associated with running the business. Not just obvious IT costs such as storage, cooling and backup but also office space, power and travel. Once established it may be that the IT department can help save money across the company
Citrix are thinking differently about virtualisation and how accessible its benefits should be in the current climate ... and they're hoping you'll think differently about them too.
FIND OUT MORE
For further information and pricing, contact your Phoenix Account Manager on 0845 265 1265 or email info@phoenixs.co.uk