The Citrix Session: What’s New with Citrix – CVAD 2308 and Cloud updates - Part 2

Citrix is bringing new features to your apps and desktops quarter after quarter. And we are just getting started as we’re rounding out the second half of the year. These past few months have come with improved security features, enhanced user experience technologies, and streamlined management capabilities. 

We continue to bring more features and capabilities across cloud and on-premises environments and are truly making hybrid the destination. That’s why we are excited today that for on-premises organizations leveraging our Citrix Current Release, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2308 is now generally available! This release comes with enhanced reboot schedules, SQL server 2022 support, vertical load balancing improvements, and much more for on-premises. We have now also introduced a Trial Universal Subscription! You can find out all about the great benefits of Citrix Universal License here. 

With that said, it is important to note that this blog encapsulates the biggest updates from the last few months across both on-premises and DaaS. Citrix is innovating in four main categories, and we have sorted the new feature announcements into those four categories below:

• Operational and IT Efficiency
• Workload and Device Flexibility 
• Security and Compliance
• Employee Experience Technology

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Bill Sutton
Co-host: Geremy Meyers
Co-host: Todd Smith
Guest: Monica Griesemer

Transcript

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Andy Whiteside: No, we wanna welcome to Episode 148 of the Citrix session. I'm your host, Andy White. So I was just laughing. You guys can see me on the webcam.

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Andy Whiteside: I go back and watch the recording Z video recording. And every time I start when I put my hand that's like my nervous tick. I put my hand through my hair. and I don't know I'm trying to make myself stop doing it, and then I catch myself doing it. Well, guys, welcome today is a November sixth, 2,023, and I've got my good group great group with me, Bill Sutton, on this integra side, Bill, how's it going? Well, Andy.

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Andy Whiteside: you things are like really starting to pick up towards the end of pickup they are starting to pick up. They have got you know.

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Bill Sutton: 2 2 of my 3 guys are really well. All 3 of the guys are busy, but very busy, although I've got one at P tech today and tomorrow. So, John, oh, yeah.

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Bill Sutton: yeah, I forgot. John was going to ptech P. Tech is the partner technical expert and Monica here in a second, but always good. I missed the days going to stuff like that. Yeah, I was. Gonna I was planning to go, but I ended up having to play Mister Mom this weekend so and today, so couldn't bow out and leave a 16 year old and a 13 year old by themselves. So

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Todd Smith: probably not a good idea. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Todd Smith Zone Todd works with customers

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Todd Smith: with cloud software group up in Canada. Todd, how's it going? It's going really. Well, it's you know, coming up on the end of our fiscal year. So our fiscal year class software group ends at the end of November. So been really busy

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Todd Smith: working with customers. And then, you know, most of our customers also have their fiscal year ends in December. So we're gonna be busy in December as well, which is

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Todd Smith: a very good problem to have. So Todd, you and I meet and talk all the time. And it's clear you guys are really investing in your core technologies in a meaningful way.

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Andy Whiteside: You know, beyond what has been happening over the last 5 years. Our customers, seeing this, are they? Are they recognizing the

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Todd Smith: to getting back to basics? You guys are doing? Yeah, yeah, it's becoming. It's becoming a much easier conversation nowadays with

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Todd Smith: probably a couple of things. One of them is the universal licensing, which means that you can

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Todd Smith: basically run your Citrix virtual apps and desktops in

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Todd Smith: any location. Right? So you're not tied to the cloud. You're not tied to one prem. We can allow you to do it wherever and the other thing is is that the

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Todd Smith: you know there's still a a huge need for customers to be able to access applications and services

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Todd Smith: from a variety of different devices

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Todd Smith: securely and reliable. And you know that message has

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Andy Whiteside: that message was valid 10 years ago, and it's still valid today. Yeah, but more valid with the hybrid work, lifestyle absolutely.

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Andy Whiteside: And and Todd, realistically, when do you see

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Andy Whiteside: the the access to? And and I hate to say, this guy hate to put Citrix in this box access to Legacy x 86 applications

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Andy Whiteside: totally going away. I mean realistic how much tail is left on that thing.

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Todd Smith: Oh, so so think about this. Y 2 K. Was, we're coming up almost almost on 25 years

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Todd Smith: of the. And think about it. They that was the end. All of mainframe based

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Todd Smith: applications. But yet you go talk to Banks and you talk to insurance companies, and you talk to government agencies and they're still running mainframe based applications in data sets.

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Todd Smith: So

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Todd Smith: I guess to answer your question. It's probably never gonna go away. There's still going to be some legacy based applications out there that still need to have reliable connectivity to them and have it be presented to the user wherever they are.

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Todd Smith: in a manner that they can understand it and utilize that that information.

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Todd Smith: When when you make that statement, do you include the windows desktop ui as one of those legacy applications. Absolutely.

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Andy Whiteside: So to me, that's the game changers. Okay, I can sas this and sas that. But if I need this, all encompassing digital workspace that everybody knows and recognizes. It knows what to do with Ak desktop.

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Andy Whiteside: Then all the sudden, that's even longer

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Todd Smith: and

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Andy Whiteside: fortunate to have Monica with us. Monica Christmaser. How's it going?

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Monica Griesemer: Going? Well, thanks, no. Thrilled to be here as always made it through

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Monica Griesemer: Halloween, you know the whole season. Okay. And now I feel like we're officially at Christmas time. I don't know. I feel like this flip to switch. So we'll see Happy November to all. But yeah, busy time here in Citrix land. And I think for everyone coming toward the end of the fiscal year end of the year. But we've got some great stuff rolling into 2024 as well, so excited to to keep those conversations going.

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Andy Whiteside: And and Monica is on here because well, we like having her and 2. She's the author of the blog that we're reviewing part 2 of today, which is what's new with Citrix evad 2308, and Citrix Cloud updates Monica anything from the last time that you wanna revisit and kind of talk through.

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Monica Griesemer: Yeah. So, as usual on a quarterly basis, we put out these whats new blogs, and for this year we've been slicing them into 4 distinct categories. We have so many great features as Todd was saying, both on premises and in the cloud that you can use with the universal license

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Monica Griesemer: that we, as product folks, as marketing folks like to categorize them into different areas to make them the story more robust and then also easier to understand.

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Monica Griesemer: So last time, if you haven't listened in, we covered the operational and it. Efficiency updates that we had as well as the workload and device flexibility updates that we've had over the past quarter today. We're gonna dive into those security features that we've added. And employee experience technologies. So all super huge for our customers. But that's what we're covering today.

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Andy Whiteside: Was was there any topics from last time that you know, maybe wanted to clarify at all.

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Monica Griesemer: Yeah. So we were talking about I remember we we had the conversation on session network typology which is in Si Citrix Monitor, where we discussed the new. Yeah, there.

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Monica Griesemer: right there, Andy, when you're scrolling here.

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Monica Griesemer: the new features, the details that you can see on the session network connectivity. And we were discussing, if that's in cloud and on Prem, I believe that it is both for gateway service and on premises gateway. So we are still rolling this out. This is still releasing, but

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Andy Whiteside: getting that session network information inside of Citrix Monitor, I know is a huge topic that we covered last time, and we're we're working to bring it both across cloud and on premises. You know. I didn't. I didn't bring this up last time, I don't think but the biggest bugaboo in this whole thing. Whenever you're talking about Ica and issues quite often for me is the frozen screen which is by design as it relates to packet loss. Does this help with packet loss as well as bandwidth and the latency.

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Monica Griesemer: I'm not 100% sure on packet loss. We have done some more updates that we'll talk about later in this episode. But I I believe there's there's some in there. I think it's mostly latency, but

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Andy Whiteside: not 100 sure on packet loss. Bill and Todd is is packet loss still an issue as much as I. It used to be, or have the you, the new protocols that basically rely on Udp by default? Have they kind of made that

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Andy Whiteside: more of a moot point.

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Todd Smith: So so we're starting. We are still seeing packet loss in certain situations. And and it's it's really certain user-based applications, right? So packet loss can have a huge impact on audio video

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Todd Smith: as an example.

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Todd Smith: and it's and it shows up is choppiness. It shows up as a little bit of slowness. And the you know the audio doesn't sync up well with the video. You almost get the Max headroom effect, or you get the

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Todd Smith: you know, the old translated movies where it doesn't exactly match up with exactly what the you know mouth is moving. But the words aren't coming out type of situation. The other things

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Todd Smith: one other area that that you're starting to see some packet loss.

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Todd Smith: It's really identifying the users that are on these really slow networks.

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Todd Smith: you know, the rural Internet connections that are not exactly robust or the converted back ports. That's now an office. Yup, absolutely.

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Andy Whiteside: and and everything's wi-fi cause you know, everything works on Wi-fi these days.

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Now.

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Andy Whiteside: alright so like a taking a lot of time here, monica, let's jump in. So let's see, where did we make it to?

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Andy Whiteside: We made it to the Security and Compliance section. Got it. So you guys, you name 4 key pillars. And what you guys are focused on evangelizing this year. And one of them's security and compliance.

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Monica Griesemer: why, why was security and compliance? I mean, it's a dumb question.

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Monica Griesemer: Obviously, that is

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Monica Griesemer: top billing and top priority for our customers. I'm talking to and about a lot of healthcare organizations, financial services organizations, anyone across the board, almost everyone is implementing a 0 trust strategy where they have to lock down everything in their environments because against phishing malware, any of it.

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Monica Griesemer: The basics of what Citrix does, centralizing your apps and data and being able to secure them, is still a huge win for all of our customers. And what we're gonna get into here, too, is not only securing your virtualized apps and data, but also your webin Sas apps as well.

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Andy Whiteside: That's been a huge conversation that we're having through secure private access with customers. So security is always top priority, especially in highly regulated industries. Yeah, for for me, the conversation is user experience and security security and user experience. They basically have to be 1, 2, 2, one

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Todd Smith: and and tool. One thing to add on this again is that you know, the compliance piece of is showing that the security systems and security policies are actually working

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Todd Smith: right? It's it's one thing to say, Hey, it's secure by design. but you've got to be able to show it. And that's what that's what a lot of these compliance programs are built to to do.

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Andy Whiteside: Yep. So Monica, first section says, easy installation of session recording service on azure.

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Monica Griesemer: Absolutely. So. This one is specifically talking about session recording the cloud based session recording. So I know we've had conversations on this podcast about how we brought session, recording capabilities from on-premises to the cloud. Now for those industries or those organizations that aren't using session recording and want to get it up and running quickly in the cloud.

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Monica Griesemer: We've made almost like an easy install Gui inside of session, recording service to make it easier than ever to get your servers, database, storage and load balancers up and running with session recording and azure.

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Monica Griesemer: So this is just showcasing that you can do it more quickly than ever.

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Monica Griesemer: And such a recording, I think, at its basics, I know, has been around for a long time. Okay, you record user sessions. You can

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Monica Griesemer: kind of see what's going on. But it we have more, much more to it than that. Now, where you can record events, you can core triggers to make sessions start recording. So they're not recording all the time. It's gotten so much more dynamic and to be able to use that as a security capability has been huge for a ton of our customers.

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Andy Whiteside: Todd Bill thoughts working examples of people who've used this as a security tool.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, I mean, I've got. I've I've I've had several customers use this but to to Monica's point, the process of getting it set up historically, has been. It's it's been involved. II wouldn't say it's necessarily that challenging. But it's it's an involved process. Because you gotta have databases. You gotta have the viewers. You gotta have the recording server and for them to create a to make it really a a very simple process, particularly

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Bill Sutton: deployed on azure where a lot of customers are now running their workloads is is a big, a big deal, and I think we don't get a lot more adoption.

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Bill Sutton: The most adoption that I've seen have been in regulated industries. Primarily financial services is where I've seen it used most. Although I know we've got some healthcare clients that have used it in pockets of their environment as well. Right?

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Andy Whiteside: Thought any any experiences with customers turning this on and using it. Situation.

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Todd Smith: Yeah. So so a couple of situations where session recording can also be used not only for compliance, but also for some training, right? So especially in roles where you're used to having a supervisor, someone, some manager

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Todd Smith: kind of looking over your shoulder. Well, now, in a hybrid environment. Someone's working from home, you to manage. It's not gonna be able to go and visit every single person's remote working location

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Todd Smith: session recording can actually be used for this. The other piece of it is making it

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Todd Smith: much less complex to go and and stand up has been a has been a huge step forward.

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Todd Smith:  In in being able to to turn it on

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Todd Smith: quickly has been has been a huge that's going to be a huge boost in productivity as well as simplification

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sounds good.

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Andy Whiteside: Well, let's talk about this as this starts to move towards artificial intelligence and other things, and then the analytics that can go along with this Monica. What are you guys calling out here?

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Monica Griesemer: Yeah. So in addition, we have added session recording events in Citrix analytics. So, as I was saying, instead of just

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Monica Griesemer: recording an entire user session, it can have event. Triggers like registry changes, session launch and ends, clipboard activity file transfers and more. So all of those data points that you're getting from session recording, anyway, are integrating now directly into Citrix analytics. And we know about Citrix analytics. You can take action, you can get a full scope of what's happening inside of your environments.

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Monica Griesemer: So, having these 2 continue to really overlap and play super nicely together is a huge advantage, because you're getting that data, anyway. So let's aggregate it together. So that's where we're moving toward

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Andy Whiteside: Bill Tod. Any comments on this.

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Todd Smith: II think, being able to tie the event to a, to a follow up action

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Todd Smith: is going to be huge. So so it is as an example. If someone is transferring files and analytics picks up on it. Analytics is already set up. So you can actually have that trigger. Some events, some activities like disabling account or shutting the person off, or even just notifying someone that hey? You know what? There's some file transfer activities that that all of a sudden has an impact on their, on either their performance index or that security index

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Todd Smith: that comes with analytics.

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Todd Smith: You know, you can really start leveraging some of that without having to require human to actually sit there review logs

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Todd Smith: and take that action right? You can actually start

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Todd Smith: automating a lot of those things by leveraging some of the the A I that's built into it. The machine learning that's built into this.

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Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: it makes it a super powerful. I mean, it makes makes it a powerful tool that just became infinitely more powerful.

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Andy Whiteside: As you start to turn on analytics, real time analytics and actions that go along with those analytics. Imagine, you know. Imagine, so we're talking about security side this, the performance analytics which goes hand in hand with this, you know, you start to notice a user experience is deprecated, and you open up a service. Now ticket and let them know. Hey, we got a ticket open for this and monitoring how much power that would bring or maybe you open up a ticket. Say, hey, we see you're doing a nominal or not. You have anomalies going on your sessions. It looks suspicious. We opened a ticket. You might want to stop.

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Bill Sutton: Exactly. Yep.

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Andy Whiteside: alright. Next, with a secure private access enhance access policy, configuration flow. This is a very, very popular topic in the Citrix world, and something that citrus can do where others can't. Monica, what do you guys cover private access for those who aren't as familiar with

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Monica Griesemer: ability to regulate and add security parameters to web and sas applications. So adding things like a watermark limiting copy paste inside of those Sas apps that you're delivering, anyway, really allows Citrix to be that one stop shop to launch all of the apps and desktops that your users need, and to have them secure and centralized in one environment.

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Monica Griesemer: So here.

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Monica Griesemer: as we're evolving secure private access, we previously, you had to have disparate policies, to have rules on each application, or to have multiple rules on one application. So now, what we're adding is the ability to add multiple rules to one application within one gui, and then you can actually prioritize those rules. So kind of do like an if, then on the rules, and then also adding

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Monica Griesemer: the configuration flow allows combining Weber Sas and Tcp and Udp apps within the same access policy as well. So just being able to kill multiple birds with one stone instead of having to create multiple policies for the same application or the same policy for multiple applications, we're making it easier than ever to secure your environment. Simply

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Andy Whiteside: bill thoughts on this.

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Bill Sutton: Yeah, we've we've implemented secure profit access that a couple of times, not as much as I would have expected. But yeah, this is, this is a a good improvement. Obviously, I mean, this is gonna align more with with what we seen in the policy engine and in Citrix virtual apps, desktops or citrix daz and setting priorities and setting hierarchies. Certainly making a lot easier to to create the policies that need to be created

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Bill Sutton: and to properly secure these these apps these secure private apps. So yeah, this is a definitely a needed feature, and something. I think that'll that hopefully help help us adopt it more readily.

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Todd Smith: Hybrid work makes this more important than ever it does. And not only does it make it more important, but it also

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Todd Smith: having a flow associated with all these policies helps eliminate the the old spaghetti bowl of Gpos, right where

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Todd Smith: you could get that would impact performance right poorly written or poor poorly ordered group policies could have a could have a huge impact on performance right? So

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Todd Smith: this by building, by having us deliver a flow for people to follow and actually guiding administrators through on how to set these things up is going to be a huge improvement as well.

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Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: yeah. I mean, I think that's always been the challenges, the complexity of everybody wanted it. But they couldn't.

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Andy Whiteside: They needed to be easier.

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Todd Smith: Yep.

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Andy Whiteside: Monica. Next one, the secure private access service app and access policy configuration using Api. So I think we might get a chance to talk about service. Now, here's okay.

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Monica Griesemer: I yeah, I think so. For this one, though I think you teed it up nicely, though, Andy and the secure private Access Service Apis help companies, automate application and access policy configuration and include it in their existing tasks. So as we're saying.

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Monica Griesemer: yes, we're getting more into the secure private access with customers. We're working on more and more folks using it. But also we're simplifying it for them, right? So if there's a barrier to entry to setting it up, then it's kind of a moot point, but with adding capabilities more Apis to automate, the security flows. It makes it much easier on organizations.

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Monica Griesemer: So that's kind of the biggest thing here is just streamlining the access and the security setup.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Bill, you see this as an enabler for allowing allowing organizations to integrate multiple systems and make decisions. And and when you take this in concept with the other things we've discussed

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Bill Sutton: the ability to make decisions leveraging automation

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Bill Sutton: much more simply than just the the native guis and be able to customize your the behavior that you want in the environment.

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Andy Whiteside: But I have any examples of where you guys have already used this.

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Todd Smith: It's some of the integration activities, right? So whether it be with some of the It service management platform like service now. But also, you know, some of the back end

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Todd Smith: system C orchestrators that are out there right being able to as an example, being able to not only dump information into

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Todd Smith: a product like splunk, but but being being also able to do it at at application or an Api level, instead of doing a data transfer of, you know, actually building that intelligence as well.

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Todd Smith: Once again, you know, making systems smarter

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Todd Smith: when they talk to each other is a is a huge step. Right? It's gonna improve performance. It's gonna improve security. It's gonna reduce the administrative overhead, the administrative tasks that are out there. And really comes down to the financial impact of that is.

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Todd Smith: you know, if I could reduce my risk and make things more efficient and be able to take resources and actually apply those resources to something that's more valuable

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Todd Smith: than reading through logs or reading through. You know, data transfers. That's going to be a huge step forward.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, yeah. The the the efficiencies

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Andy Whiteside: that are possible through Apis and the automation that go along with that and and the potential ability to

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Andy Whiteside: you know, do more with the data.

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Andy Whiteside: It really just is, it's our only hope going forward

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Monica Griesemer: Monica. Next one says, streamlining employee experience. Okay? So now, we've moved from a security discussion to that employee experience discussion that I mentioned earlier, haven't we? Yes.

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Monica Griesemer: and though they do go hand in hand, we do have this as our final section, discussing employee experience because we have some really great updates.

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Monica Griesemer: Starting with the fact that we've introduced a new Citrix user interface. I believe we talked about this last time. It was in Tech Preview. But the Ui is currently our, our cloud based ui, and what it does is it gets down to brass tacks of what our users are doing inside of the interface. So they've got their apps and desktops. You can favorite them just like you can on storefront.

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Monica Griesemer: It's streamlined. And so really, it's getting back to basics, as I think Citrix has been doing as a whole and showing exactly what users need and what they're accessing right inside of the ui, and then there's also categories with apps that come up.

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Monica Griesemer: So that's a big thing. But I think the biggest thing we want to cover here. And well, one of the biggest things is we've added activity manager, so that folks users can self serve and log off or disconnect sessions inside of the Ui themselves.

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Monica Griesemer: So this has been huge. If there's like a hung session, or if the one of their apps isn't working properly, then they can disconnect it themselves from within the workspace app.

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Andy Whiteside: and it's just streamlining things overall that we've added a ton of capabilities. But those were the big ones, the new look and feel and the addition of activity manager. So a simplified, more citrix centric look and feel that also includes the ability for the user to self service more. Yes, exactly.

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Bill Sutton: Bill. Sound like a good idea. Yeah. Sounds like a great idea. You know, this is, this is certainly a long way from dazzle right? Todd. Andy. Yeah, exactly no, I'm sure it is. So. No, this is II love the fact that you can. That. The user actually has some some power here to help resolve their own issues when they occasionally occur. So

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Bill Sutton: and I and I, I've played with this a little bit, and it's really slick. So I think it'll definitely help with adoption, for sure

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Todd Smith: goes towards the change in our users. Right? Our users are becoming much more sophisticated, much more in control of what they're working on on a daily basis. They they well, in some cases, yeah, I mean the workforce. You know there's there's new younger folks joining the workforce every day, but the thing is

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Todd Smith: they're not used to having to call and open up a support ticket to get help right? They're gonna try to solve it themselves. And this is another way of getting them the information

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Todd Smith: that maybe they can avoid having to call in or opening up the ticket.

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Todd Smith: By seeing a little bit about. Oh, well, this services down, I'm disconnected. I need to reconnect

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Todd Smith: little things like that

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Todd Smith: can help make their make their lives more productive.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah.

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Monica Griesemer: agreed. And

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Monica Griesemer: II think it's yes an expectation of what users expect. Also, we've added improvements to first time user experience here. So if you know, there's new folks that have come online, that haven't used Citrix before or haven't had it within their organizations.

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Monica Griesemer: There's a much easier graphical representation and flow to get them up and running with this, because almost all of my my friends that are my age. Older, younger have seen Citrix in their corporate environments, but not many of them, maybe not at all of them use it on a daily basis. So they're like, Oh, it's on my computer.

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Monica Griesemer: But I don't really know what it's doing. This really helps get people in and understanding what Citrix is doing for them and getting them to use it as well. And then with the self service thing. As as Todd was saying, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I literally over. The weekend had to do something on.

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Monica Griesemer: II ordered clothes online and I had to change something. And I didn't even talk to a person. I talked to a bot and it fixed it for me, and that I'm like, Okay, perfect. Not that I don't love talking to people, but when it comes to

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Monica Griesemer: things in and the Internet space things. How I expect my tech to work. That's how I expect it to work. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: And and we're getting to a point where those things are work so often that you kind of do prefer to talk to it, not them. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: Have a question, for you guys can't believe I'm going this path. But

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Andy Whiteside: when when you watch a new Star wars movie.

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Andy Whiteside: you assume it's some type of digital animation that's creating like these virtual army folks, the Clones, or whatever. and the old ones you you it was, it was obvious, as a human being inside the costume, wasn't it

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Andy Whiteside: is. Is that a good way to kind of talk about the world we're going into, where, you know it's it's all of a sudden, you know it's like, is it? Or is it not? And then, you know, within 5 years from now it'd be obvious that it's just not

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Andy Whiteside: appear a person inside it

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Andy Whiteside: that that I totally just derail the whole conversation.

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Monica Griesemer: I think we could derail it. But

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Monica Griesemer: no, II think it is an expectation that not an expectation. It's the world that we're living in is artificial intelligence. So I think it

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Monica Griesemer: it definitely could be known. But

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Monica Griesemer: there's still beauty. And in the basics, but

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Monica Griesemer: there's an expectation, and continuing to move with the future or getting left behind. I don't know, Todd, do you feel the same? I think we can coin the phrase. The reality is artificial intelligence.

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Todd Smith: the impact but but it really, you know, get to the point of

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Todd Smith: if I can start using things that other people have developed or other people have set up the process. And I can just leverage that

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Todd Smith: it's taking. It's taking valuable time out of my

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Todd Smith: 24 HA day that I could repurpose and reuse someplace else. Because I'm I'm actually taking advantage of something that you know, work that was done by others, or I'm not gonna have to worry about that.

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Todd Smith: you know, Forrest, Gump said it best. He goes. Well, that's that's good. That's one less thing I have to worry about.

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Todd Smith:  You know the the the amount of space that we have in in

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Todd Smith: in our human ability to process things. If we can eliminate

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Todd Smith: those mundane remedial tasks. you know. Let someone else do it, or let something else do it for us. That's not always a bad thing

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Andy Whiteside: you, you know, I really, really, really do like this conversation when you tie it back to the the you know, the the human beings that that died dressed up as storm troopers versus the robots that just got blown away as clone Clone whatever's called clone troopers. It's called Clones.

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Andy Whiteside: Now we'll move away from this topic. But while you're saying that I'm over, you're googling it. I'm not the only person asking this question. Believe it or not.

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Andy Whiteside: There's a whole discussion on the Internet.

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Monica Griesemer: Oh, you you you're going on the whole rabbit hole

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Andy Whiteside: alright as citrus guys. Let's talk about what we really really love the most, and that is the Codex and the protocol the next section. Monica's hdx powered by public tech preview. II thought the I thought the protocol wars were long over, but we still run into situations where they're not. I think this is part of that.

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Monica Griesemer: Yeah, absolutely. So. This has been an exciting announcement that we introduced the AV. One and codex in public Tech Preview. So really introduces better graphics performance and lower CPU utilization.

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Monica Griesemer: So you're saying, the protocol wars. So people expect better and better. It's interesting, right? Because even when you see something that was HD. Or blu-ray from years ago, sometimes it's not as good as HD. Today.

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Monica Griesemer: So you think the protocol wars are over until we get more accustomed to better right and also

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Monica Griesemer: implementing this and and things like graphs and charts. If you think health care, if you think financial models, if you think

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Monica Griesemer: 3D imaging and manufacturing the Crispr the better. So having these codecs, and then.

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Monica Griesemer: in addition, the AV. One Codec enhances performance and lower CPU utilization. So the best of both worlds there so less expensive and better all the same time.

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Andy Whiteside: can you ask for more? Yeah. So, Monica, is this intend to be used for in all use cases, or, like, you know, medical imaging type review type stuff.

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Monica Griesemer: I think it would be more graphics, intensive use cases. But I mean, eventually.

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Monica Griesemer: folks might just be accustomed to ultra. HD, but yeah, initially, I think things like

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Monica Griesemer: medical imaging or manufacturing modeling. That sort of thing is probably where it's going to start. But

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Monica Griesemer: again, I mean, I expect my

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Monica Griesemer: Netflix to be an HD. So

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Monica Griesemer: I think eventually it could get much more mainstream.

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Todd Smith: Let me tell you about dhs.

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Todd Smith: I remember those 2, but but you know you're bringing up. You're bringing up a really valid point in the fact that, you know it's it's what the users are expecting, what they've what they've grown up and what they've become accustomed to.

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Todd Smith:  you know, it's the.

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Todd Smith: It's the old school animatronics versus

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Todd Smith: the CGI generated stuff that's available today.

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Todd Smith:  there are certain use cases in, you know, in, in, in healthcare is a great one, right?

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Todd Smith: You could not for for many years you could not do diagnosis of

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Todd Smith: radiology, radiology, images on any device that has not been certified

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Todd Smith: by the manufacturer. which meant that those few manufacturers had the market on they cornered the market on radiology images

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Todd Smith: because it was very expensive, and it was only they were the only ones that were certified right now. People are doing. You know, they're looking at, you know.

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Todd Smith: outside of the healthcare world, they're they're analyzing Space telescope information. They're they're they're doing that 3D modeling with precision and not being able to recognize the difference between what is

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Todd Smith: being presented on the screen in what's being. you know, what's actually available in a 3D model. right? So there's so there's a lot of improvements here.

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Andy Whiteside: So so Todd, from you and Monica's response that what what becomes mainstream in the day to day world will probably become mainstream in in this professional compute world that we live in. And the the need to continue to evolve our protocols. It's, it's, it's just reality.

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Todd Smith: And I think it's also it also addresses the human nature that that you know, we we, as humans, have the ability to fill in those gaps. you know, when we hear something, we hear someone talking. And all of a sudden there's like little bits that that miss.

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Todd Smith: We actually we actually have the ability to to bridge those gaps and bridge those those momentary losses.

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Todd Smith: you know, when we're talking about

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Todd Smith: processing. It's, you know, machine processing.

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Todd Smith: They don't have that ability.

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No.

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Andy Whiteside: And and as we get things like better and better displays which is happening, all of you guys well, I'm probably looking at the worst display of of the 4 of us.

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Andy Whiteside: Just like with the the picture that's shown here, you do start to see the nuance between something that's clear and something that's almost clear. Yup.

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Bill Sutton: I think. Yeah, I think that's what what we've come to expect. And then the you know, the evolution of display technology as you look and look back the past

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Bill Sutton: 3 to 5 years, I mean, and I think that folks that are

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Bill Sutton: that are used to that used to the evolution of the the the Mac display, or or 4 k. Or 8 K. Displays of the ability to be able to give a similar experience in a remote hosted

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Bill Sutton: delivery model. Is critical

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Andy Whiteside: and help again helps adoption. II think, back all the time to my dad, had this big screen TV by big screen, I mean, like 40 inches weighed a thousand pounds, and in hindsight it was horrible now, for you know, 250 bucks. I can buy a 40 to 50 inch TV at Costco. That's

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Andy Whiteside: pretty amazing. And it's not good. When you set in beside something that's, you know, a 3 or $4,000 TV. Exactly. Yeah. I mean to the point where I'm I'm not even gonna buy an outdoor TV. I'm gonna buy a TV, put a cover over and see how long it lasts.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, my brother did the exact same thing. So I'm not spending all that money for an outdoor TV. I'll just if it dies. It's 200 bucks, you know. I'll buy another one. It's a long time.

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Andy Whiteside: $29 cover on Amazon. Looks like my answer.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright Monica, keep talking protocol. The Ed enhanced this

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Andy Whiteside: display. Transport enhanced Edt. You can tell me what that means. is part of the new gateway service, Lossie.

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Monica Griesemer: Yes, so we have, added EDT. Lossy to Citrix Gateway service. So this is about

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Monica Griesemer: loss, tolerance. And it's a transport protocol designed to enhance end user audio. So even though, Todd just said, we can fill in the gaps as humans.

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Monica Griesemer: It's nice when we don't have to. So making sure that we don't have audio dropping and introducing Adt. Lossy, we've been talking about this for a while, and it is now, I believe, Ga, with gateway service. So just continuing to improve that audio experience, and you had to ask me

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Monica Griesemer: enlightened data transport, I think, is what Edd is. That's right. Yeah. And just for our listeners, toddl, let you do it. What's what? What is that? What did it come, what did? What's the origin of Edt

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Todd Smith: enlightenment? Yes, so so it was a way for us to help expand out what? What we use within channels within the Ica protocol, right? So being able to

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Todd Smith: as we shifted, you know.

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Todd Smith: Tcp versus Udp, right? So this is a this is a way to expand upon. Our ability to manage

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Todd Smith: to break down that, that

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Todd Smith: that pipe, that that that total bandwidth down into smaller channels. Once you have it in the channel. You can actually prioritize what channels get, get precedence when it's going through the network.

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Todd Smith:  and it really helps with long haul connections

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Todd Smith: as well as you know those inconsistent. you know, rural network connections that are out there.

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Andy Whiteside: And and Todd, is this the one that's kind of Udp falls back to Tcp, if it senses the need.

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Todd Smith: you can. Yeah.

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Bill Sutton: Ability comments on just the overall concept of Ed Lossy through the gate. Yeah, I mean leveraging Udp, the the transport protocol that doesn't require acknowledgments. You're basically just like just throwing the data down the wire. And if it makes it, it doesn't, if it doesn't make it. That's not a big deal, because we can compensate for it by waiting for it to be resent, or or we just compensate for it. So and this this from an audio perspective. It's critical, obviously, because

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Bill Sutton: you have to wait for all those acknowledgments then. And you're you're dealing with a packet loss or latency. Then you end up with choppy audio and leveraging Udp, which is the foundation I think of. Edt. Gives gives a much better experience for the end user. And typically, I don't think

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Bill Sutton: use necessarily uses as much bandwidth.

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Todd Smith: Beautiful.

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Andy Whiteside: okay? Awesome. Well, I love that. We? We wrapped it up with talking protocol cause? Yeah, that's that's good.

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Andy Whiteside: It's one of many things. It makes Citrix, the market leader, the industry leader, and I think others competing with Citrix.

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Andy Whiteside: you know, kind of deflect the conversation away from this. But it's still very important.

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Bill Sutton: absolutely.

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Andy Whiteside: Monica Todd. Thank you for spending time with us as always. And we look forward to having the next chat, Monica. I thought we'd get this done in in 3 weeks. It took us 2 which is awesome, but maybe if we have it sealed it for next time we'll pick another Monica blog and we'll cover. It

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Monica Griesemer: sounds good. Yep. And as I said, we do this on a quarterly basis. So hopefully, in December. My colleague, Emma Bland, is running the the launch that's coming out in December, so I she would be great to have on the call. She's a former citrix consultant, so she'll be

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Monica Griesemer: able to really give some great background as well. So again, you, you know, my, my team is always here cranking these out every quarter. So and we love coming on the podcast so just let us know when you want us to come. Chat. What do you have coming up?

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Todd Smith: So we're you know, we're almost at the end of the fiscal year.

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Todd Smith: Luckily, most of my business in Canada has been pretty much wrapped up.

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Todd Smith: So, looking forward to prepping, prepping for a fiscal year 2024

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Andy Whiteside: did

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Todd Smith: Did. Did you see a lot of growth in the Citrix business in Canada this year? We we did. Yeah, we did and last time I was up there we actually had a chance to to catch up with.

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Andy Whiteside: there's always plenty to do for sure, including lunch, which is where I'm gonna do next. Alright. Thank you for the time, guys, always. And we look forward to doing.