We now have Citrix Xenapp hosting.
Preconfigured accounting environments for:
Specialty hosting is also available. Connectors for Mac, Linux, Windows desktops. Connectors also available for iPhone, iPod, iPad, Adnroid and Blackberry (July 2010).
If you have ever had to plan this for yourself or someone else, the list can get detailed and long. Besides “space”, people, yellow page listings, signage, stationery, web sites, email accounts and all of the other usual suspects, there’s a different technology being used to replace VPN’s, Servers and PC’s with remote desktop enabled being left on all night or all weekend.
Enter Citrix: They take the application and wrap a software around it to make it useable on a lot of different devices. They have real cool stuff that sips the bandwidth and makes the screen run as though the program was right on the desktop. We’re a big fan of Citrix application delivery. We are consistently moving customers to Citrix hosted applications when it makes sense, which prevents a customer from having to purchase anything at all, except a subscription.
Citrix offers a dizzying array of connectivity software for different platforms: iPad. iPod. iPhone. Blackberry. Windows Mobile. Android. I may have left a couple out.
Over the past six months one of our customers has been working with a vendor to move their critical line of business (LOB) application to a Citrix environment, which is no simple task because a major database conversion would have to be performed, and users trained. Wile it’s interesting to see the process, it usually doesn’t take that long.
Here’s an example: Friday we had a customer move an application datafile from their server to a Citrix server hosted outside. Monday morning we installed the Citrix client on their PC’s. There was their application AND data.
We copied their user files from the server to the respective PC’s, and turned on “syncplicity” for them, which synchronizes designated folders on their PC’s to their Google Apps accounts. So while they automatically share some of the data at Google, other data is not shared.
Guess what happened to their server? <poof!>
I didn’t mention that they have remote field offices. Since we installed a voip based phone system for them, the remote offices connect directly to the main office for telephone needs.
The remote offices simply need a basic internet connection, PC and a voip handset (or software on the PC). Instant branch office, with everyone communicating in real-time.
In the next week or so we’ll see the official Android app for the Citrix receiver. There is already one for the iPhone, iPod and now the iPad. Before June is out Citrix has promised to ship the Blackberry version.
Later this month we’ll be unveiling a new hosting service for Google Apps Premiere Customers. Hosting the BES (or BPS) server for you through our Amazon.com dev-pay service.
No physical server or Microsoft license to buy. Simply provide us with your BES (or BPS) license and we’ll set it all up. You pay for bandwidth, storage and backup. No power, no Internet connection, no physical server at your location. With BPS licenses starting at 99.00 per user, it’s not exactly expensive.
You simply provide us with your existing Blackberry server licenses, or we procure them for you and your own license for Microsoft Outlook 2007. This is different from other offerings in that it is not shared with other companies, it is your own Blackberry server, the licensing of which belongs to you.
If you are interested in our Google Apps offerings or already have one and want someone to get you started with your own Blackberry server, head on over to our website and give us a call.
After reviewing with you, you can purchase it here, but you will need an Amazon account first:
https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/user/subscription/index.html?offeringCode=25505230
Setup is usually available in 1-2 business days after order is placed.
In the past six months, we’ve unplugged 17 physical servers. That’s right, turned them off. What were we using them for?
Backup. DNS. FTP. Web Servers. Monitoring Systems. Email. Spam filtering. File Services. The list goes on.
While we still have some of this in house, it was helpful to reduce our electronic footprint by going to datacenters and to mostly cloud based services.
What is a cloud? I have a hard time explaining this. We use a PC endpoint security system that is delivered completely via the Internet. That provider does this via a distributed parallel computing system connected to the Internet and is worldwide. Is it cloud based? Yes, since it is everywhere at the same time. Is their application written and an application and OS-less? No. So it is cloud “friendly” but is not a complete cloud based system.
We have some VMWARE systems at a few datacenters. These are GUEST OS’s running on top of hardware that may not actually have a running OS, but since the GUEST is a full OS, it is not “cloud based” but is connected in a way that allows us to move the image from one part of the country to another and crank it back up. So it is “cloud friendly” too. Still not a completely cloud based system.
Two VERY GOOD EXAMPLES of cloud based system:
1. Google Apps – Third Party developers write applications to Google’s API and connect to Google. These API’s can run AT GOOGLE in their cloud, so no hardware is necessary, nor a full OS.
2. Amazon – Amazon’s Storage and S3 products are the same way. You can attach to them with many different 3rd party software. Our Windows Server customers use a subscription plan to backup their data to Amazon and get billed directly from them.
Why is Cloud based the way to go? We’re not saying it is, but we’ve reduced our internal operating costs by over 80% across the board. We no longer maintain 17 different pieces of hardware, reduced our power bill, become much more distributed in the event of a disaster, and plays very nicely into our distater recovery planning for ourselves and for customers.
We haven’t factored the reduced labor maintenance costs yet. We already know the contrast is stark!