The last couple of days there is a lot of positive but also some negative commotion in the twittersphere about the announcements made at Citrix Summit/Synergy in SF.

Some of the announcements made:

• Server hosted VDI
• XenClient Enterprise (Citrix’s acquisition of Virtual Computer)
• Project Avalon
• a new release of AppDNA
• Project Aruba
• HP’s HDX SoC
• ShareFile, Podio and Receiver integration
• FP1 for XA
• The HTML5 Receiver
• CloudGateway 2
• GloudBridge 2

And much more..

What I see and hear is that people are disappointed about the fact that there are supposedly no major releases announced of XenServer, XenDesktop and XenApp but the real wow factor lies in the fact that Citrix is finally integrating all of their the “point” solutions bought in the last couple of years, so we can deliver the best services possible in the simplest way to our end users. Looking at Project Avalon, we were told that it’s an a complete stack of Citrix (and/or non-Citrix) products to deliver services:

Project Avalon is a powerful new solution that brings together a wide range of Citrix technologies to help customers deliver any Windows app or desktop as a true cloud service. Rapidly deploy personalized Windows apps and desktops in a flexible, private cloud environment across single or multiple sites and utilize public clouds in a “capacity-on-demand” fashion. Leveraging the new Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack, makes it easy for existing customers to adopt new features at whatever pace they like. This allows them to mix and match different versions of Microsoft Windows Server®, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp and span across any mix of public and private cloud infrastructure to host and deliver powerful, effective work styles for all users.

Below is the high-level architecture of Avalon:

On a high level this is an interesting article: http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/05/09/project-avalon-what-does-this-mean-to-me/

From a technical level this is a good explanation: http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/05/09/project-avalon-automating-windows-app-and-desktop-delivery/

The architectural overview makes clear that all products are used in Project Avalon are integrated to a complete solution, I heard a Citrite once say: “We’ve got all the right ingredients to make the bake, all we have to do..” Looks like Citrix is baking the cake as we speak.

Think about it, the integration between ShareFile, Podio and the Receiver leverages all the best of those point solutions with a single point of access, Project Avalon creates a vendor agnostic provisioned cloud platform which can deliver resources without interference of an IT organisation.

So the real ‘wow’ faction in integration, maybe it’s save to say that integration is the new innovation?