Citrix Systems today announced a new release of Citrix XenDesktop™ 4 that enhances end user experience, improves scalability, simplifies management. With the new Feature Pack 1 release, XenDesktop 4 offers significant new improvements in user experience, enhancing the company’s high-definition HDX™ technology and allowing users to access their virtual desktops up to 5x faster. The new release also builds on recently announced XenDesktop scalability enhancements, enabling customers to host an unprecedented 100,000(1) shared virtual desktops concurrently from a single location, dramatically improving the ROI of desktop virtualization in large scale enterprise deployments. Finally, the new release simplifies application management by incorporating all the capabilities of the recently announced Citrix XenApp™ 6 as an integrated feature, including seamless new integration with Microsoft App-V and support for Windows Server 2008 R2.

Today’s XenDesktop news is part of a broad set of announcements from Citrix that expand the company’s longtime partnership with Microsoft in desktop virtualization (see related news blog: Desktop Virtualization in 2010 Update – Citrix and Microsoft Join Forces To Simplify Virtual Desktops). By joining forces in desktop virtualization, Citrix and Microsoft can offer customers integrated virtual desktop solutions that deliver far better flexibility, ROI and user experience than any other solution on the market today.

Access Virtual Desktops up to 5x Faster – New streamed user profiles in XenDesktop can shorten virtual desktop and application log-on times up to 5x, dramatically enhancing user experience. The new release also includes a variety of enhancements to the company’s HDX technology, designed to ensure a high definition experience for all users, regardless of where they are or what type of device they are using.

XenDesktop 4, Feature Pack 1 has been verified deliver an unprecedented 100,000 shared virtual desktop sessions concurrently from a single location. The shared hosted model is one of several virtual desktop options included in XenDesktop’s groundbreaking FlexCast™ delivery technology that supports every major desktop virtualization model in a single, integrated solution – a breakthrough that improves ROI, simplifies management and extends the benefits of virtualization to every employee in the enterprise.

The new XenDesktop version incorporates all the capabilities of the company’s recent XenApp 6 release, including tight integration with Microsoft App-V. With more than half the ROI of desktop virtualization coming from centralized app management, these improvements offer significant new simplification and cost savings for IT.

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As part of XenDesktop, HDX WAN Optimization optimizes performance and network utilization across a WAN by compressing, accelerating and prioritizing traffic, and HDX SmartAccess delivers simple and seamless secure access to users anywhere based on their identity, location and device. Software-based virtual appliances are now available for both Citrix Branch Repeater™ and Citrix Access Gateway™.