iPhone Citrix Receiver Application
I’ve Just been doing my usual monthly catch-up on the Citrix iPhone client project to see what progress has been made. Well Citrix have now released a tech preview of the new Citrix Receiver software for the iPhone and you can download it directly from the Apple App store using the link below.
I downloaded the application and went to use it, only to find that it can only be used if you have a direct connection to the XenApp 5.0 server. Basically this currently limits users to those who have a wireless network infrastructure or who can make a VPN connection from their iPhone. One beta tester was using the new Citrix receiver with a XenApp server hosted on Amazon’s EC2 cloud platform, with good results according to the feedback
I was myself slightly disappointed as we currently run Xenapp 4.5 and have an existing web interface and secure gateway remote access setup. So I can’t use this application to access my companies systems when I want to check something whether it be email or IT admin related. I though perhaps Citrix would develop a client that would act like a standard ICA Client, so that when I connect and log in to the web interface the new Citrix software would allow me to use Citrix within the Safari web browser. Unfortunately that’s not the way it’s been designed.
I can see why Citrix have gone for this approach, they’ve introduced a number of gestures within the software that activate features you would need on the Citrix server side. For example, right click within applications like microsoft word or selecting, copying and pasting of text. If I was able to log in through my iPhone safari browser without these kind of features, I can imagine it would get quite frustrating after a very short period of time.
It’s important to remember that this is by no means the completed application, this is a tech preview and as such is not fully feature laden just yet. For instance through a little searching I’ve found out that CSG / WI + 2 fator authentication will be in the final release but are not included in the technology preview. For more information regarding features, demo videos, requirements, forums, etc check out the main page for the new Citrix Reciever
