VirtualPro

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 viewed with interest recently the announcement that VMware had purchased Trango, a company specialising in hypervisors for smartphones.

The reason it interested me is that I’d heard about them for the first time only a few weeks before the announcement.  Having read about what they and other companies in this field did I was starting to see the benefits of having a hypervisor in a smartphone.  If we look at the industry at present, having recently purchased the new Iphone 3G, it’s easy to see why developing a software platform for a known hardware configuration ultimately leaves you with a more stable and high performance experience.  Apple have built an entire business utilising this very stringent but successful means of delivering great products to market.

If we look at the alternatives we have Microsoft Mobile or Symbian OS’s trying to operate on numerous different hardware platforms with mixed results. I think this is where the hypervisor comes in to its own and provides great options for the mobile chip manufacturers / mobile phone manufacturers to make the job of the mobile phone OS providers and mobile application programmers easier.  If there is a hypervisor layer which can standardise and simplify what is presented to software then compatibility becomes less of an issue.  Mobile OS software becomes a whole lot easier to write and new mobile phones can be released to market a lot quicker.  The need for extensive test and development is cut dramatically for both the handset manufacturer and the mobile OS manufacturers. 

There are three main players in this market place at present, Trango, VirtualLogix and OKLabs.  Interestingly of the three, only OKLabs actually has it’s hypervisor product in handsets that have actually been released to market. At the point VMWare bought Trango,  they had yet to actually get their hypervisor into any smartphone handsets. 

I’m interested to see which way VMware play it from here on in.  Do they look to use their size and get a hold of the mobile hypervisor market while the other players are just small independents.  Working to make licence sales to chip and handset manufacturers who can in turn improve time to market and OS integration within their own business areas.  This would seem like a sensible area to get a foothold,  I mean VMware have just made Trango the biggest fish in that particular pond.  The expertise and knowledge gained from a foray into this market would only serve to underpin their VCloud vision.

One area you can almost guarantee they’ll be looking to utilise Trango in is within the VMware View universal client.  Take your applications to any handheld device,  regardless of it’s processor, regardless of any of it’s hardware.  This will be an important area that will need to be addressed if the Cloud is really going to be what everyone wants it to be,  freedom to move around, freedom to access what you want when you want from wherever you want.

I’m now waiting to see if Citrix, Cisco, Microsoft, Google or even Amazon make a similar play.  You usually see at least a couple of them go down the same path,  I also imagine buying up one of the other two companies in this particular secotr wouldn’t be that expensive a play to make.

General, New Products hypervisors, Smartphones, VMware