Citrix gets fat on thin clients

Citrix chief executive Ed Iacobucci can smile as he sees his company go from strength to strength on the back of the thin client movement, write Gavin Clarke and Colin Barker.

The network technology company will roll out new versions of its Winframe and Metaframe products early next year, and has signed a range of deals to help companies such as UUnet and BT supply hosted applications services to customers. This should generate new business for Citrix.

Iacobucci says he credits Microsoft with the surge of interest in 'thin-client' computing. Citrix has a deal with Microsoft under which Metaframe is sold alongside NT Terminal Server. Metaframe is server management software for Windows Terminal Server.

'That endorsement of thin clients has kicked up a lot of interest,' Iacobucci said during a visit to London last week.

'Two years ago I'd have told you the biggest challenge was convincing someone you could run an application somewhere different to where it is hosted. today people understand it can be done - the whole experience is different,' he said.

The new versions of Winframe and Metaframe will appear in the first quarter next year and Metaframe will include new server capabilities, including a video server for downloading video clips to clients.

'Metaframe will have applications management, bandwidth management, new user interface, and new media types, including streaming video,' Iacobucci said. 'Out of that will come a healthy product. We don't have video streaming - at the moment it's multiple bitmaps.'

Version 1.8 of Winframe has a completely new interface with 'applications that are published to the client effortlessly', Iacobucci said. 'It makes for a much more dynamic connection. Now the user has to query the server, and the applications they are entitled to are installed at the client.'

While Metaframe has been seen as the new generation of Citrix product, Iacobucci maintains that Winframe is still the most popular product for Citrix customers, with eight million users. 'That total exceeds the installed base of X-Windows,' Iacobucci claims.

He believes the popularity is due to Winframe's support for a variety of architectures, including MS-DOS, 32-bit, Unix and Mac.

'People are using what they have,' he said. 'We are going to see thin clients spread and augment the existing infrastructure for the first time.'

But now Microsoft is competing with Citrix, using NT Terminal Server.

Iacobucci plays down the competitive side of the Microsoft relationship.

'Terminal Server has been pushed as the enterprise product,' he said.

'It's fair to say most of it is sold by resellers and integrators - this is not a product you can buy and install shrink wrapped. You need integration and support.'

Iacobucci said of Microsoft's pricing strategy for Terminal Server, under which users must buy an NT workstation licence for every client: 'I understand why they did it. I don't think it's the right thing (to charge for all users) and we told them. I haven't seen any indication they will change.

They are discussing it internally. For the enterprise it is not a big deal, but it can be for the small and medium-sized businesses.'

For analysis of Citrix and Microsoft, see page 28.