Citrix used its iForum event in Las Vegas last week to announce new and upgraded products designed to give IT managers “an end-to-end virtualisation strategy”. The products - Citrix XenServer and Citrix XenDesktop - are based on technology that Citrix gained through its acquisition of XenSource.

Citrix UK business development manager Fraser Kyne said that XenServer is a repositioning of the brand, but that XenDesktop would have a number of new technologies integrated into it.

“It will have virtualisation for actually delivering the OS platform, and technology from our desktop server and provisioning server platforms to produce a turnkey system out-of-the-box that will have the components needed to provide users with a virtual desktop,” Kyne said.

Quocirca principal analyst Dennis Szubert said that Citrix could be a serious contender in the virtualisation market.

“It has acquired network acceleration and optimisation technologies, and has client/server performance monitoring. Another advantage is that Citrix is close to Microsoft on the application side,” Szubert explained.

Citrix also provided an update on Windows-based application delivery systems for branch offices that it is developing in partnership with Microsoft. Citrix will supply the hardware, and Microsoft the networking and application services.

“This is still under development and the beta product will be out later this year, provided as an appliance or a server option,” said Kyne.

Citrix also announced a partnership with Dell to offer an OEM edition of its XenServer across Dell’s PowerEdge line of servers in 2008. Rival server vendor HP will also make XenServer available on its ProLiant server range.

Other announcements included an upgrade to Citrix Presentation Server (CPS), which now includes a feature called EasyCall that allows communications capabilities, such as click-to-call, to be embedded into enterprise applications. Another new CPS feature is SmartAuditor, which allows firms to record onto hard disk specific application session screens. These could be played back later to address any compliance concerns firms had, Citrix said.

CPS will also now enable datacentre managers to set policies that can automatically reduce server power when application traffic levels fall during non-peak hours.