News

Citrix Ships 64-bit Presentation Server

• By Stuart J. Johnston
• 10/13/2005

Citrix Systems is shipping an update to its flagship Presentation Server product that adds support for 64-bit memory addressing technology in Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions, the company told attendees at its iForum conference in Las Vegas this week.

Presentation Server is Citrix’s premier product for application virtualization -- running end-users’ applications on the server. The new version is named, somewhat awkwardly, Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition.

The support for 64-bit addressing in Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition lets users take advantage of as much as a terabyte of physical memory rather than four gigabytes as 32-bit Windows does. Both Intel and AMD have 64-bit addressing schemes that they have been widely implementing in their newer processors. Microsoft released the x64 editions of Windows Server 2003 in April.

Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition will enable users to run significantly more users per server than versions for 32-bit Windows, according to an official at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla. company.

“[Customers] will be able to get two to three times as many users per server, depending on the application,” says Anthony Ricco, Citrix senior director of platform marketing.

Among other things, that means that users can consolidate more applications onto fewer servers, says Mark Margevicius, Gartner vice president and research director for client platforms. “Because of 64-bit support, we can now scale the number of users on the same server [which] . . . most certainly improves the efficiency of [using] Presentation Server,” Margevicius adds.

The majority of customers use Presentation Server to securely and centrally run desktop productivity applications like Microsoft Office, browsers and e-mail clients, Margevicius says. This type of server-based computing greatly simplifies security and administration and enables IT management to replace desktop PCs less frequently because the heavy lifting is done on the server.

Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition comes in three editions – Enterprise, Advanced and Standard. Citrix Presentation Server, Enterprise Edition is also available to customers as part of Citrix Access Suite.

Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 starts at $290 per concurrent user and includes one year of Citrix Subscription Advantage. Existing Presentation Server customers with a current Subscription Advantage account as of Sept. 30 are eligible to receive it at no charge.