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Citrix Systems Inc. began on April 17th, 1989. When they released their first product “Winview” I was one of the early adopters. I worked as an IT Pro in a progressive company that used NeXTSTEP on the desktop, Novell Netware as the network and key line of business applications in DOS. I tried every technology available to create a single, integrated desktop for the users across these platforms. This included early remoting and virtual machine technologies such as QuarterDeck DESQview/X and Insignia Solutions SoftPC.  I was then was given a lead on small Florida based company which had the ability to actually host multiple users on one piece of hardware and display those applications on a remote computer. Although it was done over serial connections at the time (TCP/IP was a major upgrade later!) it worked and almost 15 years ago we were able to do what we take for granted today.

Needless to say, the rest is history. My love affair with the technology began and has persisted through every generation up to todays’ Citrix. In 1997 I founded Thin Client Computing and have had a very enjoyable and successful career ever since designing, implementing, optimizing, stretching and finding new and interesting ways to apply these great technologies. Happy Anniversary Citrix- below is my video tribute, as requested, for a great 20 years !!

The funny thing is that I am writing this on a Mac OSX machine (i.e. NeXTStep) with an ICA connection to XenAPP (i.e. Winview) and running a Windows Virtual Machine on my desktop. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

In upcoming episodes we will talk about some of the newest technologies- Dynamic Provisioning, VDI, XEN and Netscaler- stay tuned….

Steve Greenberg, CTP/MVP