Q: What is Citrix XenDesktop ™ ? A: Citrix XenDesktop delivers desktops on-demand to users anywhere while dramatically simplifying lifecycle management. It provides an end-to-end desktop delivery solution that accelerates the delivery of desktops to knowledge workers, enables stronger data protection and control, and reduces the cost of ownership of desktops by up to 40%. Q: Is Citrix XenDesktop a desktop management product? A: No. Citrix partners with vendors that offer comprehensive desktop management tools that integrates with Citrix XenDesktop. Q: What customer challenges does XenDesktop address? A: XenDesktop is targeted for Infrastructure and Desktop Operations teams in medium to large enterprises with 250 or more desktops. XenDesktop helps customers dramatically reduce the costs of rapidly delivering new desktops or upgrading existing desktops. This strengthens data security to achieve desktop compliance and providing anytime anywhere employee access to desktop for business continuity. Traditional desktop deployment involves cumbersome, manual time-consuming processes that lead to high TCO, poor data security and little flexibility for end users. Q. Does Citrix XenDesktop replace Citrix XenApp? A: No, they are both vital elements of the Delivery Center and complement each other to provide a flexible, dynamic system for delivering applications and desktops. Installing applications on desktops – regardless whether they are physical or virtual – leads to application conflicts and poor system performance. It also introduces variables that make every desktop unique, requiring IT to manage, update and secure them individually. The best approach is to not install applications at all and instead virtualize them using XenApp. Hundreds of thousands of XenApp customers already do this today to make applications more manageable and cost-effective. The Enterprise and Platinum editions of XenDesktop include a version of XenApp to deliver virtual applications to virtual desktops so that desktops can be rapidly created, provisioned, updated and delivered on demand to any user in any location. With this architecture, you have one place to manage your Windows desktop image and connections (XenDesktop) and one place to manage your Windows-based applications (XenApp). Q: How does Citrix XenDesktop fit into Citrix’ end-to-end virtualization strategy? A: Citrix offers the industry’s most comprehensive end-to-end virtualization solution as part of Citrix Delivery Center. Citrix XenDesktop rounds out the solution by providing an end-to- end desktop delivery solution that complements Citrix XenApp for application virtualization and Citrix XenServer for server virtualization. Q: How is Citrix XenDesktop different from the XenServer product line? A: Citrix XenServer provides server virtualization, enabling one hardware device to host multiple server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2003) to provide better server utilization and data center consolidation. Citrix XenDesktop is a separate product that provides desktop virtualization, which enables many Windows-based desktop operating systems (such as Windows XP, Vista) to be centrally hostedin the data center and delivered to users anywhere. Citrix XenDesktop can only virtualize desktops and XenServer can only virtualize server operating systems. Q:How does Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops relate to Citrix XenDesktop? A: Both products are key parts of the Citrix Desktop Delivery solution – XenDesktop for delivery of virtual desktops to office workers and Provisioning Server for Desktops for delivering physical desktops. XenDesktop is a standalone product that does not include the Provisioning Server for Desktops product. However, XenDesktop does utilize core technology derived from Provisioning Server for Desktops for its virtual desktop provisioning functionality. Citrix XenDesktop Frequently Asked Questions