VirtualPro

Once again,  no sooner had I written an article on the Citrix iPhone Receiver tech preview release  and Citrix announce the release of V1.0 at Citrix Synergy.  I should have known that was going to happen to be honest!

So I downloaded it as I was keen to see if it worked with my companies existing XenApp 4.5, Web Interface and Secure Gateway configuration.  I entered the details of the server, username, password, domain and configured the access gateway settings.  Straight away I was prompted to enter my passcode,  so far so good I thought. Then the error message “untrusted server certificate”  appeared, for some reason I was expecting an error,  I just knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

I’ve been troubleshooting this for a couple of days now,  I don’t appear to be the only one having issues as there are a few posts on the Citrix forums on this problem.  I’m still actively troubleshooting but I appear to have two specific problems, server certificates on the iphone and the need for a PNAgent site on our external facing web interface server. 

UPDATE

I’ve now had a chance to spend some time looking into this and with the help of Scott from Citrix on the Citrix forums I’ve managed to get this working,  all be it without the 2 factor authentication that I require. So how did I get it working.

- Create a PNAgent site on your external facing web interface server
- Following the instructions in Thomas Koetzing article on creating an external facing PNAgent site
- Configure the iPhone reciever to connect to https://FQDNofCSG/Citrix/PNAgent/Config.xml
- Turn off the access gateway access,  it then uses domain authentication only. 

You may also find that you need to install the certificate of your Web Interface server on your iPhone in order to connect.  To do this I extracted the certificate and then sent it to my iPhone email,  opening the attachment allows you to install the certificate easily.

I’m trying to follow up on the lack of 2 factor authentication with the Citrix guys on the forum,  my fear is that if a user selected “logon automatically” then a lost iPhone gives access to your corporate network which could be very damaging indeed.

Citrix, Smartphones Citrix, Iphone

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

Citrix, Smartphones, XenApp Citrix, Iphone

Just been catching up with the progress on the new iPhone Citrix reciever software over on the Citrix community website.  They’ve been busy,  they’ve posted a number of new posts showing off their latest work and they’ve also been out at MacWorld doing demo’s of the new Citrix reciever software.  The MacWorld demo’s interestingly enough utilises a Citrix server in the cloud,  on Amazon EC2 to be precise.

So what new stuff have they been working on for us,  well first off was a demonstration of a silverlight website on the iPhone.  Now most of you who have iPhones will know that it is seriously let down by it’s lack of flash support,  well maybe silverlight is ready to step in and fill that gap?  well with the iPhone at least,  check out the demonstration video below.

The other cool thing I spotted while I was looking through was Cut and Paste on the iPhone.  Now watching the demo video you will see that the user appears to be within the Citrix reciever application,  if you look closely you will see sharepoint as well as office applications in the app list.  As the demo moves on you can see the user accessing office 2007 as a published application,  looks excellent so far.  The user in the video then proceeds to cut an paste some text from PowerPoint into Word 2007,  check it out for yourself.

Now it appears I missed one video last time I was on the site,  this time it’s the keynote from the Citrix Summit 2008. It’s a great demonstration of the smooth roaming capability that Citrix supports,  showing the session jumping from one iPhone over to an iPhone simulator on a Mac and back again.  It also shows some of the traditional benefits of Citrix,  only screen refreshes and keyboard presses are transferred allowing a 16Mb picture to be opened quickly over 3G.

1st half of 2009 is what’s being talked about for the release,  I can’t wait!!!

Citrix, Smartphones, XenApp Citrix, Iphone

Just been catching up with the latest updates on the new Citrix Reciever for the iPhone, codename Project Braeburn. Citrix seem to now be in full flow with the work on this product,  the advanced product team in Sydney, Australia are leading the charge with the development.

The following is an extract from the latest update from Adam Jacques on the 17th of December,  sounds like Citrix are working to release this as soon as possible and look to fine tune the new application via real world usage and feedback.

One of the exciting parts of being able to work on this project is the fresh and innovative approach we are taking to get the software in your hands as soon as we can so we can shape future releases.  It’s fair to say that the Braeburn team is working schedules like never before and using a much more agile approach to the project’s release.
We are aiming to be very transparent (through the use of this site) so that you know what’s going on with current and future releases of the project.

The way we are approaching the initial release is that we will be getting our version one on to the AppStore as soon as we can so we can get feedback from all of you… our plan is that it will have the core technology which will allow you to manage and make connections to the Citrix Delivery Center and as I mentioned, we are working on a very aggressive schedule and we will be having many regualr updates to the project available on the AppStore as we add additional feature after feature.

But it’s not all about features that you have grown to expect from other the other App Receivers available to connect to Citrix infrastructure, we also have a few tricks up our sleeve that we think you’ll love on your iPhone… let’s just say we are thinking differently about ways to access and interact with your information whilst going mobile with the iPhone.

The initial release is scheduled for sometime in the first half of 2009. The initial release will consist of base functionality with the added extras coming later as App Store updates,  the team have indicated they would like feedback to assist in deciding the priority of new features and would like to hear from you on their forum pages. The main website for the Project Braeburn team can be found here, the forums are not up and running yet but they’ve been promised soon.

To keep up to date with all the latest on this release you can find all Citrix blogs relating to the iphone by clicking this link. 

As a little teaser here’s a little demo video of a prototype,  looks good so far!!

Citrix, New Products, Smartphones Citrix, Iphone, Smartphones

Interesting article on a couple of sites this morning referencing a release of a virtualised blackberry software instance that can operate on Window Mobile 6.x devices. Now the actual concept has been touted since early 2007 but the most recent articles indicate that it’s nearly ready for release.

I did have some links in here to pictures of the virtualised blackberry instance running on the new HTC touch.  However just last night the pictures along with the video I had linked in this article were pulled.  I’m not sure why but the site says “due to unforseen circumstances we have decided to remove the article”.  Perhaps they were worried there “insider” was going to be exposed or perhpas RIM had a quiet word in their ear?

You can find a couple of screenshots here though , someone copied them before they were taken down

Anyway, the idea of a virtualised instance of the blackberry software is an interesting one,  it does perplex me a little though.  I’m trying to understand where this would fit in out there in the real world.

Blackberry is obviously regarded as the top enterprise mobile email solution,  one that is hugely popular and went unchallenged for some time.  Microsoft Exchange 2007 introduced push emal functionality to offer an alternative to the Blackberry Enterprise Server product.  This push email functionality can be utilised by Windows Mobile handsets as well as the iPhone which I feel has brought some much needed competition into the market place.

So why have Blackberry decided to develop software to run the blackberry on windows mobile? What kind of usage are people out there going to get from it? I can think of a couple of possible usage scenarios.

- Switching from Blackberry to Windows mobile and Exchange 2007 push email.  You could distribute the new handsets and still utilise the blackberry email delivery allowing you to phase cutover.

- Your users may want to use Windows Mobile devices as their phone but the company deliverys mobile email via blackberry.

- Software Updates,  if you have a virtual instance you can just redeploy an updated version as and when it comes out,  Possibly in a similar way to iPhone App Store updates.

It will be interesting to see how it works out for Blackberry and what the uptake is when it is finally released.

General, New Products, Smartphones Blackberry, Smartphones, Windows Mobile

I finally finished my 18 month mobile contract this week and so to celebrate I jumped supplier and moved to O2 in the UK so I could get myself a new 3G Iphone.  So today was the first real chance i’d had to sit down and look around at what applications were out there for use with this fantastic device.

One of the first things I went looking for was a Citrix ICA client.  I use Citrix as my main way of connecting into work remotely when I’ve got a task to do out of hours,  being able to use it on the Iphone therefore would increase my flexibility in that I don’t have to be at home or near an internet connection when I want to do something that can only be done out of hours.

After doing a bit of reading it would appear that Citrix don’t have an Iphone Citrix client yet but they are definately working on one.  Chris Fleck’s Iphone blog has been updated recently to state that they will be shipping a “Citrix App Receiver client for the iPhone”  sometime in the first half of 2009. Keep your eyes peeled to this blog page for updates and make sure you cast your vote to tell Citrix what you need Citrix on the Iphone for,  lets raise the priority on this one.  There’s a great little video of what they’ve managed to achieve already on Albert Grandville’s blog site looks pretty sweet.  Suppose the only question is going to be in and around interaction with the windows desktop,  I don’t think anyone will be writing up any large reports on their Iphone.

Citrix, Smartphones, XenApp Citrix, Iphone