When will the iPad deliver in the enterprise? We first asked this question on Feb 11th when we interviewed the Citrix team. At the time, we gave it a thumbs-up as the Citrix team had good answers for all of our questions.
Today, with the launch of the iPad, Citrix has delivered on its promise of making Citrix Receiver (powered by XENApps) for iPad available as a day one app in the iPad app store. Seeing is believing, so today we took a look at the new application on the new device.
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Citrix isn't shy about the opportunity for iPad. The demonstration they shared focused on one of the toughest IT nuts to crack, health care applications in the hospital. From what we see, with some reasonable configuration, the iPad, with Citrix Receiver installed, is ready to read and write health care records today.
Citrix Reciever uses software virtualization to bring backoffice applications all sorts of smart clients, including Windows, Windows Phone, iPhone, and iPad. Here is a demonstration offered by Citrix on the Citrix Receiver on iPad.
Today, the ReadWriteWeb team installed the Citrix Reciever for iPad app, here's first impressions.
- Real-time setup. The app installed perfectly, but setting up the Citrix account takes 15 minutes. In our real-time world, we found ourselves downloading other apps and almost forgot to check back. A minor issue, but perhaps something to consider for enterprise deployments.
- Gestures. In the world of iPad, point and click converts to pinch and slide. As noted in our earlier post, Apple has done a lot of the heavy lifting to get parity with mouse and finger controls. Still, we asked the question of whether gestures mapped, our first impression is that all the basics are there.
- Custom icons for each application session. We reported that this might be an important feature. Citrix acknowledged it being part of the implementation. Today, we see that this part of the framework enabled by Apple and supported by Citrix. Each enterprise application can be dropped onto the iPad home screen and it will have a custom icon per your setup.
- Streaming. One of the considerations for all software virtualization is the ability to stream real-time changes from screen to screen. In the demonstration above, we see examples of real-time application heart visualization. This capability seems to be a key for leveraging existing investments and to avoid having to re-build these applications for iPad.
Citrix has done some heavy lifting to prepare iPad for the enterprise by focusing on its strength in preparing back office enterprise applications to be available to smart clients like iPad.
Now, the big question. Are you preparing your enterprise for iPad? Do you have questions or wish-list items for the team at Citrix?
Credit: Frederic Lardinois RWW's brave iPad owner who wrestled control of his new day-one device from his family to do this evaluation.
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