Citrix updates ‘features’ of key products

Citrix has shipped the first feature releases for MetaFrame XP for Windows, MetaFrame for Unix, the portal product Nfuse and VPN product Extranet.

The new releases follow last September's announcement that Citrix would segment product releases into two categories, feature and platform. Feature releases consist of customer-focused upgrades every six months and platform releases entail more significant architectural changes, and will be issued probably every two years.

Citrix Systems Asia-Pacific marketing director Gary O'Brien says there are more than 50 new features across the products but he believes three within MetaFrame XP for Windows (the most widely used) Feature Release 1 will be the most significant to New Zealand and Australian customers.

The first is support for Novell Directory Services, on account of there being a large and loyal Novell NetWare community in both countries.

"In the past, for Citrix to work with NDS we've had to do a little bit of manipulation and planning. It wasn't as easy as it could've been. Now MetaFrame can go to NDS user groups and publish applications to them."

Another change which O'Brien hopes local users will appreciate is the Citrix universal print driver which consolidates print driver requirements into one, eliminating the need for administrators to manage multiple drivers on servers.

And with the growth of B2B and B2C e-commerce, the addition of SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption simplifies the task of going through customers' and partners' firewalls.

SSL encryption is also a feature added to MetaFrame for Unix, as well as the ability to view applications from clients at large resolutions and in up to 16 million colours.

The feature releases are free to current subscription advantage members and non-members can buy them from Citrix resellers.