Citrix today announced the general availability of version 5.5 of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) platform XenDesktop. The product comes with the RingCube technology which Citrix acquired earlier this month at no extra costs in each edition. Citrix also released XenApp version 6.5, XenClient 2.0 and new versions of the Connector for Windows and Mac.
New features in this release include:
- Early access to the vDisk,Universal Profile Manager and Folder redirection technology coming from the RingCube acquisition.
- More than 150 HDX improvements, including:
- Bandwith efficiency, claiming a 30% reduction in bandwith consumption
- Smoother audio
- Better video performance, introducting Adaptive Display as the successor of Progressive Display
- Extension of the Flash Redirection technology to WAN-connected users
- Improved Windows Media redirection
- Aero redirection for local rendering by sending the DirectX graphic commands over ICA to the GPU or IGP on the user device.
- Server side Aero rendering using Microsoft RemoteFX
- Multi-stream ICA, which splits virtual desktop traffic into five separate streams providing better Quality of Service (QoS) controls
Suggested pricing for XenDesktop starts at $95 per user or device for the VDI-only edition, the Enterprise or Platinum editions are priced at $225 and $350.