Citrix Demos Early Prototype of XenoApp; Allows Access to Windows Apps from an iPhone

Citrix develops products like XenApp and XenDesktop that allow remote access from a variety of computer platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac OS and also from Windows Mobile and Symbian mobile devices.

Albert Grandville, Product Manager at Citrix, who looks after the End User Experience admits that the small form factor of mobile devices along with slow and unreliable wireless networks have been a challenge and has resulted in relegating hand held access to small and highly specialized market segments.

However, he believes that's all about to change with smartphones like the iPhone with its large and high definition screen and the availability of high-speed 3G network.

According to Grandville:

"A hand held device such as an iPhone connected to XenApp via a high-speed 3G network yields a remarkably usable experience.

While serious content creation might have to wait for an external keyboard and monitor, consuming content like reviewing a spreadsheet or a patients records and simple tasks like approving an expense report are quite frictionless. And because you're accessing your content via XenApp and XenDesktop your access is fast and reliable and you never need to worry about your valuable data being compromised if you misplace or loose your phone.”

He reports that Citrix's Mac development team in Chalfont, UK has recently finished porting the core XenApp engine over to the iPhone platform.

You can checkout the demo video of their iPhone app (an early prototype) in action below:

As you can see, the iPhone app is still work in progress as the demo does not show any data entry and seems to be similar to an app that gives you remote access to Windows machines like WinAdmin ($11.99), Remote Desktop ($5.99) and several other iPhone Apps on the App Store.

Fortune blog reader, Bob, points out that XenApp for the iPhone is different, it gives you access to hosted applications on XenApp servers thus allowing dozens to hundreds of users to access their applications remotely from a single system.

Citrix achieves this by using the very efficient Citrix ICA display protocol while VNC apps like WinAdmin (I am assuming) use traditional framebuffered protocols.

Grandville has provided the following clarifications:

"ver 1 of the iPhone app will not have support for the seamless virtual channel which means you'll only be able to run one app per session at first. It's top priority for ver 2 which shouldn't more than 6 to 8 weeks or so behind ver 1."

"This was just an early prototype. We are building a XenApp UI that is focused on document consumption and built specifically for the iPhone. We have no intentions of creating another remote desktop client. Delivering a desktop to the iPhone may be interesting technically but it's not the best user experience under even the most ideal conditions. If this is going to be more of a technical curiosity we need to make sure the usability of the client is our primary focus. We are building the app enumeration and launch facility now, it will be in the first release."

"This demo is of an early prototype. Scrolling, panning and scaling, zoom in and out, right mouse click, etc.. will all be part of v1."

"We will support data entry and manipulation in v1. Performance over 3G is great!"

"Development is well under way, we are targeting a v1 release to the App Store in the first half of 09. Our initial focus will be on Apps and Documents."

"The Citrix Java client is never going to work on the iPhone. We are building a native client with a UI designed for the iPhone platform."

The iPhone app will be available free as Citrix does not charge for client software.

Whats your take on Citrix's XenApp for the iPhone?

PS: The music in the video is "Higher and Higher" by The Moody Blues (iTunes Store link).

[via Citrix User Experience blog]

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