Citrix Enhances Market Leading HDX Technology for High-Definition Virtual Desktops

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), announced a new breakthrough addition to its market leading HDX Technology™, ensuring a high-definition virtual desktop experience even for the most demanding high-end professional graphics environments. The new HDX 3D technology, available as a feature of Citrix® XenDesktop™, delivers a rich, high-definition desktop experience applications to users in any location, over any network. Combined with the full portfolio of HDX technologies in XenDesktop, the new HDX 3D capability allows organizations to leverage talent globally, while still housing data centrally, assisting in real-time collaboration among disperse design teams while still ensuring the security of critical intellectual property. HDX 3D is part of an extensive range of HDX technologies from Citrix that go well beyond a single protocol to address potential problems in all parts of the IT infrastructure, from the datacenter, to the network, to the device. Combined with the company’s groundbreaking HDX Adaptive Orchestration technology, XenDesktop can also dynamically adapt to changes in the environment by applying the best technologies for each unique user scenario (see http://hdx.citrix.com for more detail).

“Citrix continues to raise the bar in desktop virtualization user experience”

“Desktop virtualization, and XenDesktop in particular, has really picked up steam in 2009. A critical success factor to mass adoption in the enterprise remains the ability to ensure a PC-like experience over any network, which is particularly critical for employees who work with high-end graphics, design software, animation and the like. Although these use cases have not historically been considered within the reach of Centralized Virtual Desktop architectures, in many cases they may make an ideal use case if a powerful user experience is achieved,” said Michael Rose, research analyst, IDC. “It is exciting to see new technology innovations like HDX 3D in XenDeskop, which extends multimedia performance and makes virtualization a viable solution for a broader set of users.”

Now Citrix XenDesktop with HDX technologies can deliver virtual desktops to all office-based users within the enterprise – including the most advanced professional graphics power users – through a single desktop virtualization product. Other technologies being introduced to the market consume excessive amounts of bandwidth and are only capable of delivering slow and frustrating performance such as, user click and mouse response time, over the wide area network (WAN). XenDesktop with HDX 3D provides the best performance possible over the WAN, and over a local area network (LAN), HDX 3D consumes 10x less bandwidth¹ than alternatives while still providing a high-definition user experience. This allows IT to implement virtual desktops without going through any expensive network upgrades.

“We are looking at how we can centralize desktops with 3D applications in the datacenter. This can be really challenging because the performance is so critical. XenDesktop with HDX 3D for Professional Graphics finally provides a solution that can deliver strong 3D application performance remotely, which will help us better meet the needs of our students,” said Brandon Combs, information technology analyst for the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati

In industries such as manufacturing, engineering and graphic design, architecture and animation, design teams are often geographically-dispersed but still require the ability to collaborate and work from the same source files. And, these teams work with highly-valued intellectual property where security is paramount. Without the right technology to support these teams, enterprises are hampered in their ability to be nimble and tap into talent in multiple geographies. Teams who are co-located across the world must often work sequentially on projects, incurring the cost of travel and shipping to collaborate while running the risk of exposing critical IP to security breaches. Desktop virtualization provides significant business benefits to these organizations – among them, making secure, global collaboration possible. With the right desktop virtualization technology that delivers a high-definition experience of a virtual desktop, enterprise users are ensured the best experience over any network. Design teams can collaborate in real time and keep IP safely housed in the datacenter.

XenDesktop with HDX 3D delivers these benefits by centralizing the OS, applications and data in the datacenter, and quickly and securely delivering desktops with the user experience required. Enterprises no longer have to compromise on delivering maximum performance even to users over the WAN.

“The new Citrix HDX 3D for Professional Graphics software will further enhance HP customer choice for advanced workstation-class Citrix XenDesktop experiences delivered today by HP ProLiant Workstation Blades, Performance Series thin clients and the HP Virtual Client Essentials software portfolio,” said Jeff Groudan, vice president, HP Thin Clients and Virtualization Solutions.

“Citrix continues to raise the bar in desktop virtualization user experience,” said Param Desai, director of product management for Virtualization Solutions at Wyse Technology. “The addition of the HDX 3D capability in XenDesktop brings desktop virtualization to a critical use case within the enterprise - users of high-end graphics. Together with Wyse R90LW/LEW devices the two companies can deliver a clearly superior user experience for a broader set of use cases.”

HDX Sets the Standard in Virtual Desktop User Experience

Citrix HDX includes a broad set of technologies designed to enable a high-definition user experience of virtual desktops and applications in today’s multimedia-rich computing environment. These technologies reside across the entire end-to-end delivery system. Citrix HDX Technology provides built-in value to XenDesktop, delivering a high-definition experience of a virtual desktop to every type of desktop user, even high-performance graphics users.

User experience remains the most critical element required for organizations to broadly adopt desktop virtualization. Citrix continues to drive innovation in user experience and its desktop virtualization product portfolio will be further enhanced this year with HDX technologies that enable the delivery of multimedia applications – including rich media, voice and video – to users anywhere.

“Citrix continues to raise the bar on desktop virtualization user experience with HDX 3D delivering the best real-time graphics performance. Unlike other players in the market, we’ve invested 20 years in innovating what it takes to deliver desktops and apps to users. The addition of HDX 3D significantly enhances our breadth of capabilities that ensure an unparalleled experience for every user in every scenario,” said Raj Dhingra, group vice president and general manager, XenDesktop product group at Citrix Systems. “XenDesktop with HDX Technology provides the only desktop virtualization solution that can deliver the best possible user experience for every user type without sacrificing performance over the LAN or WAN.”

Availability

HDX 3D will be available at the end of September as a feature of Citrix XenDesktop Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum editions for all new and existing XenDesktop customers at no additional charge. More information about HDX 3D and HDX Technology can be found at http://hdx.citrix.com.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leading provider of virtualization, networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world’s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2008 was $1.6 billion.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.

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¹ Based on internal tests against competing solutions