Its been a while since I wrote a blog post so I thought I would resume activities by looking at the latest Citrix development, namely their acquisition of RingCube and the impact that it has had on the desktop virtualization space. It always amazes me the amount of activity that can come from what is a relativity small group (the desktop virtualization community) when announcements such as the RingCube acquisition are made and more importantly, how there can be predictions of doom for various organizations.
I didn’t write this to attempt to explain how or why any vendor’s technology would survive an acquisition but more to highlight how a lack of business sense within a community can lead to inaccurate claims. When an organization in an eco-system acquires technology or releases product its easy to focus in on specifics and overlook the bigger picture. What I would say is that instead of searching for negatives in every technology deal, people would do better trying to look at the positives and understanding how such movements generally drive things forward…
I’ve worked in the Citrix / Microsoft Terminal Services space since the beginning and have seen the technology of both companies go from strength to strength however this has never stopped the community stating that Citrix are doomed each and every time Microsoft released a new platform. Even though there have been many “Citrix Killer” moments over the past decade, the value of Citrix as an organization has continued to grow, demonstrating that when it comes down to it, many in the community don’t really have a clue about how business works outside of the lab.
The technology that Citrix have acquired is smart technology and allows them to provide a more complete solution to their customers. The ability to maintain differential changes to a virtual desktop image (regardless of how it is implemented) has long been a sticking point with the technology and the RingCube software goes a long way to address this.
So what have we witnessed with the RingCube acquisition? Over the past few weeks we’ve seen various tweets, blog posts and even a comical video hinting at the possible demise of organizations such as AppSense, RES Software, Liquidware Labs and others. Interestingly, a similar flurry of activity came about in February 2010 when VMware acquired RTO Software and I wrote a post back then about the resiliency of the various eco-system organizations.
What people fail to realize or consider when making statements about various organizations is areas of business outside of the narrow focus of the community. What I mean by this is that RES Software and AppSense are desktop and user focused software providers, not Citrix add-on technology and not desktop virtualization tool-sets. While I could argue the in’s and out’s of the products involved and how they are or are not affected, even if the RingCube acquisition solved every user problem it would still only be focused on a small user-base in the grand scheme of things.
Enterprise Complexity
In today’s IT eco-system we have an abundance of organizations providing solutions to make the management, implementation and use of technology easier. If you walk around the various trade shows or look over the many websites, time and time again you will see marketing material about making IT simpler; “if your organization implemented widget x you would increase productivity by 300%” or “if your servers had product y then you could fire your IT team” – each vendor correct in their claims, and each product offering great benefits.
The challenge to all of this simplicity is that IT covers a massive spectrum in terms of use cases and if you were to introduce every piece of technology that made things simpler into an environment you would have one complicated set of tools which you would need to manage. While my statement sounds funny it’s actually more real than you might imagine.
Back in the day when computing was expensive and access to resources was limited, management was simple. Yes, I know what you are thinking, here is the usual opening line of every vendors PowerPoint deck but stay with me a second… What has happened over the years is that technology has not only improved but rapidly we have found better ways of using existing technology however organizations have not evolved at the same pace. While Citrix demonstrated that Terminal Services was phenomenal software for providing access to client-server applications, organizations still have legacy mainframes or such applications running in traditional environments and while SalesForce.com has demonstrated the power of a cloud based CRM solution, the CRM business still exists and is healthy. All technology advancement does it provide new ways of doing things, it doesn’t destroy the old ways overnight.
So where am I going with this?
Citrix provides excellent desktop virtualization software and with the addition of the RingCube functionality, today provides an even better solution. What the community needs to understand (or realize) is that desktop virtualization is not going to replace 100% of desktops overnight, or even ever replace them all for that matter. The traditional desktop, the terminal services application or desktop, and even the cloud desktop is going nowhere fast and let’s face it, it was and still is a multi-billion dollar market.
In closing out I would like to sum up the point of this post by going over my second paragraph again. I didn’t write this to attempt to explain how or why any vendor’s technology will survive the acquisition but more to highlight how a lack of business knowlege within a community can lead to inaccurate claims. When an organization in an eco-system acquires technology or releases product its easy to focus in on specifics and miss the bigger picture.
Thoughts?
This post was filed in AppSense, Business & Technology, Citrix, Desktop Virtualization, RES Software, RingCube, User Virtualization
About Jon Wallace:
Jon is a senior executive and technology veteran having worked with some of the largest and most complex technology environments in the world. As director of emerging technologies for a leading multinational software organization Jon focuses on creating disruptive strategy and maintains an in-depth view of the industry at large.
With the experience of working from the field level to the boardroom Jon brings a unique viewpoint catering for many factors and one which is based on real world experience.
Thank you for writing this – it was a pleasure to read.
You have some good points but forgot that this feature celebrating community drives the innovation of Citrix, VMware, AppSense & Co.
Hi Jon
I always enjoy reading your posts as they are well thought out and well written. I think that you have hit the nail on the head here and your explanation of the way Citrix has continued to increase in value is an excellent point.
I am happy that you started writing again and I look forward to more content like this from you.
Kind Regards.
Chris
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