Brian Madden is now a Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA)

I'm often asked whether I'm Citrix-certified. For the past five years, my answer has been "no." And when people find out I'm not, the next question I'm invariably asked is, "Do you think you could pass the exam if you just showed up and took it?"

Posted by Brian Madden on August 11, 2008 -

Symantec acquires a desktop broker. Combined with past Altiris and AppStream acquisitions, we now have another major player in the VDI space!

Looking to "redefine endpoint virtualzation," yesterday Symantec announced that they bought connection broker software vendor nSuite Technologies. Known mostly in the medical field, nSuite's Desktop Connection Broker product manages ICA or RDP connections to virtual desktops and to Terminal Server / Citrix sessions. They also have a single sign-on solution and a rudinmentary desktop shell management product with Proximity Printing.

Posted by Brian Madden on August 06, 2008 -

Quest Software releases Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite 5.10

The Provision Networks division of Quest Software just released Version 5.10 of their Virtual Access Suite, their VDI / TS application and desktop virtualization product. This is the first major release since Quest hired four formerly independent world-famous experts.

Posted by Brian Madden on July 29, 2008 -

"What I learned at BriForum" Webcast - Wednesday 7/30

Our sixth BriForum conference took place in Chicago about six weeks ago. It was our biggest event yet, with over 400 people and 75 hours of technical breakout session content. A few weeks ago I was talking to another presenter, Kevin Goodman, (the guy who created the "Logon Chart" with me), and we were talking about the cool things we saw and learned. "You know," Kevin said, "This conversation would make a great webcast."

Posted by Brian Madden on July 28, 2008 -

Are you using x64 Terminal Servers or Citrix? Why or why not?

At BriForum last month, Steve Greenberg, Joe Shonk, and I led a breakout session about using the x64 version of Windows for Terminal Server and Citrix Presentation Server. It was an interesting conversation, and something that's worth discussing in the larger context of the community.

Posted by Brian Madden on July 22, 2008 -

Citrix ICA client for the iPhone. Would you care?

Last month, Citrix showed a mockup of what an ICA client for the iPhone could look like. Does this represent the future of application access, or is this just a neat party trick?

Posted by Brian Madden on July 16, 2008 -

Qumranet testing day one: a new method for benchmarking. Also, XenDesktop hangs and VMware withdraws.

Gabe and I are in Sunnyvale, Calif., this week working with Qumranet. Last week we wrote a blog post about our project describing our plans and asking the community for input as to how we should conduct our testing. (The short version is that we are evaluating Qumranet, Citrix, and VMware in the VDI space, and we had some questions about the best way to conduct our tests. Please read that original article before you read this article.)

Posted by Brian Madden on July 15, 2008 -

How do you lock down a Terminal Server?

Christa Anderson and Kristin Griffin are collaborating on a Windows 2008 Terminal Services book for Microsoft. Part of this project includes small "tips from the field" entries written by different people. They asked me to write a short bit on security, specifically, what's my one "hot tip" about locking down a terminal server?

Posted by Brian Madden on July 11, 2008 -

We're planning to benchmark Qumranet (KVM) vs. Citrix XenDesktop vs. VMware ESX for VDI workloads. Help us design the tests.

Qumranet has hired Gabe and me to conduct performance tests of their product and to compare it to other leading VDI products. Gabe and I will be doing that work next week, and we're spending this week putting together our test scripts and plans. In this post, we explain our ideas for testing and invite you to make suggestions or to criticize / critique our plans.

Posted by Brian Madden on July 09, 2008 -

VMware fires President & CEO. Stock is down 27%. Expects to miss growth targets. Sky is falling. (How's that for a headline?)

Actually, the headline pretty much sums it up. VMware just announced a "change in executive leadership " whereby the old CEO Diane Greene is gone. Paul Maritz, president of EMC's cloud division, will take over. (EMC owns VMware.) So far the stock is down 27%.

Posted by Brian Madden on July 08, 2008 -