“XenApp is a cornerstone of our Citrix Delivery Center product family and allows our customers to move beyond merely deploying applications to delivering them to users in a flexible, cost-effective, scalable manner," said Gordon Payne, SVP and GM of the Delivery Systems Division at Citrix Systems, as Citrix announced Citrix XenApp 5, the next generation of what Payne described as "the world’s most widely-deployed application virtualization solution."

Simon Crosby of Citrix Systems, in the "Virtualization
Power Panel" currently running on SYS-CON.TV

The new release of Citrix’s flagship product, added Payne, breaks through performance and operating-cost barriers, making application start times up to 10 times faster, dramatically improving end-user experience and lowering application management costs by more than 25 percent over previous versions - based on Citrix internal product testing.

"XenApp 5, when used alone or in conjunction with Citrix XenDesktop, now makes it even easier for customers to centralize applications in the datacenter and deliver them as an on-demand service to both physical or virtual desktops for either online or offline usage – an approach that improves security, enhances user productivity and can save millions of dollars over traditional methods of installing and managing applications," said Payne.

“XenApp 5 broadens the horizon of the end-user experience and accessibility by delivering an end-to-end virtualization solution that addresses the needs of both local and hosted applications,” said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “In addition, XenApp 5 is giving new and existing customers a welcome boost in performance at an attractive price-point, two highly sought-after requirements for companies investing in strategic technologies in today’s economy.”

“Microsoft and Citrix share a common vision around application delivery,” said Chandra Shekaran, general manager of presentation and hosted desktop virtualization at Microsoft Corp. “With XenApp 5, Citrix is once again extending the core platform capabilities of Windows Server 2008 while delivering a leading virtualization solution compatible with the Hyper-V role. XenApp 5 can help provide better user performance and cost savings to our joint customers who are turning to Microsoft and Citrix for their VDI and remote computing projects.”

XenApp 5 will be available September 10, 2008.