Tag: citrix

Remote Works Podcast from Citrix

The good news is that over the past year, most of us have had to adapt to at least some level of remote or at-home work. Technology has scaled up and companies have invested in tools for collaborative workflow, teleconferencing (e.g., Zoom calls in your pajamas), and converting paper-dependent processes to electronic documents (PDFs everywhere!).

The bad news is that we may need to rely on these tools and processes for the foreseeable future, as the pandemic lingers and pushes more employers to continue the work-at-home model.

One podcast we’ve found interesting is the Remote Works podcast produced by Citrix. It’s a podcast focussed on the changing nature of remote work, with insightful interviews and topics (sustainability, burnout, security, etc.) related to our new work-at-home reality. Each episode is about 25 minutes long and centers around a unique challenge of remote work. If you are a fan of podcasts, it’s worth adding to your subscribe lists.

For those not familiar with Citrix, many of our Win2PDF Terminal Server Edition customers use the Citrix platform to host their applications (and Win2PDF) for remote access, so they are well positioned to have real-world experience in this area.

In other news, we’re still tracking for a new update of Win2PDF that supports Windows 11 (with full support on day 1), and a few other new features are in the pipeline. We’ll have more details of both in a future post. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of summer!

VDI Management: In-house and In-the-cloud

As a follow up to our previous posting, we thought we’d link to some additional resources on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).  In particular, how are VDI solutions being managed today, and where is this technology going in the future?  And how can you use Win2PDF with VDI to expand PDF functionality across more platforms and devices?

VDI in the Cloud
VDI in the Cloud (image from Virtual Bridges)

There are a couple of different ways of managing a Virtual VDI implementation – either hosting the infrastructure components in-house or hosting them in the cloud.  We won’t go into all of the details in this  post, but we did think it useful to share some resource links to the major vendors in this area.

The most common way VDI management is handled today is to have each enterprise host both the hardware and software in a centralized location.  This can be pricey (since the company needs to buy all the hardware and software components), complex, and difficult to manage from a load-balancing and performance perspective.  Organizations utilizing this type of approach probably use a solution from one of the major players in the VDI software space and you can find more information about each following the links listed below:

The second, newer way VDI solutions are managed are by utilizing a cloud-based service.  In addition to the providers listed above, a relatively new entrant into this space is Amazon.com, with their Amazon WorkSpaces product.  The following video provides a good overview of how their cloud hosted VDI solution differs from the traditional in-house solution.

Amazon’s hosting infrastructure could be a game changer in the way enterprises deploy VDI.  It allows organizations an easy way to support Windows apps on non-Windows devices, such as Android or iPad tablets.  And, as user mobility becomes increasingly common, the ability to support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) technologies will only become more important.  Providing secure application access on any device is the ultimate goal.

Whether enterprises move their VDI management to the cloud in serious numbers still remains to be seen, but it is an interesting option for companies that want to get started without the upfront cost and complexity.  Our Win2PDF products support both the tradition in-house VDI solutions and the new Amazon WorkSpaces product.  It’s a great way to provide the ability to generate PDF files to any BYOD user.