Citrix announced a limited technology preview of virtualized Linux apps and desktops, that integrates with XenApp and XenDesktop and extends the FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA) to enable additional use cases in industries such as automotive, manufacturing, oil and gas and financial services. When used with Citrix HDX, the company’s market-leading user experience technology, customers will get unmatched performance and bandwidth efficiency for people accessing Linux desktops from any device, over any network. In the future, the HDX technology for hosted Linux apps will continue to evolve to enable even the most demanding GPU-based graphics applications. People interested in participating in the Citrix Linux Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) Tech Preview to test and provide feedback on this project may submit an application at http://now.citrix.com/LinuxPreview.
With this new Linux support, customers can simply deploy the Citrix VDA on each server or desktop hosted in the data center. Administrators can use a single configuration and monitoring console for their Linux apps and their Windows apps to have a single view to deliver virtual apps to people such as engineers, designers, scientists and developers.
Many of the requirements around Linux applications relate to mission-critical research and development work that includes chip design, high-performance computing projects, and numerical computation done in financial and scientific modeling, big data analysis, and engineering tools. In addition, Citrix customers are asking for virtual desktop support for specialized 3D applications built exclusively for Linux, particularly in the oil and gas industry, manufacturing, and digital media and entertainment industries. These customers need to offer secure, global access to employees using a wide variety of mobile and desktop devices, while maintaining centralized control of business-critical intellectual property.