Citrix 'Project Independence' to isolate PC work and play

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 22 January 2009 10:46

Business IT - Technology

• Desktop management costs will be greatly reduced thanks to the relative simplicity of the centralised virtual desktop model.

• The corporate desktop will be accessible in the office, at home, and on the road - and even if the hardware is borrowed, the isolated VM for business use will remain secure.

• Employees will switch between their virtualised personal and corporate desktops as desired, boosting satisfaction, productivity and security.

• Employees will receive the benefits of the latest and greatest corporate desktop without the struggle to install operating system patches and new versions of applications. One system image is maintained in the data centre, and it's delivered to users whether they are in the office or elsewhere. Project Independence will also make use of the graphics processor and other local resources for best performance.

"Citrix and Intel have worked together to lead the development of the open source industry standard Xen hypervisor, which has brought an entirely new level of openness, security and scale to the server virtualization industry,” said N Louis Shipley, group VP and general manager, XenServer product group at Citrix Systems.

"Extending that collaboration to the client will enable our Citrix Delivery Center infrastructure to communicate directly with millions of Intel-based devices, changing the game in desktop virtualization in a way that benefits customers of both companies," he added.

Citrix expects the first phase of Project Independence - which will include the new hypervisor - to be delivered in the second half of 2009.