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Citrix Flashes Project Pictor At iForum Edinburgh

Friday, 08 June 2007 by Michel Roth

At iForum Edinburgh, Citrix demonstrated the progress the have made in their Project Pictor. Project Pictor is a project within Citrix to help alleviate one of the limitations of Server Based Computing: poor performance on graphically intensive programs. This project was spawned from custom work that Citrix did for Boeing to improve the responsiveness of OpenGL in their three dimensional drawing programs.

There's hasn't been too much public information about Project Pictor and every now and again it shows up again. The fact that Citrix was displaying it at iForum Edinburgh must mean that Citrix still is actively pursuing it. If Citrix decides that Project Pictor there's enough business demand to really go the distance with this technology it will still will remain the question how they will sell this. Currently it is unclear whether this technology will be an add-on in future versions of Presentation Server (I think it won't make in into Presentation 5.0) or if it will be sold separately like the Citrix Desktop Server for example.

These "graphical limitations" of Server Based Computing have been around as long as I can remember. It shouldn't be a surprise then that different vendors have started putting products out there that are specifically designed to address these limitations. HP is one of these vendors, with their Remote Graphics Software (RGS). NEC is another company that is working to address the issues.

A totally other way could to utilize streaming technology to stream Operating Systems to (thin) clients and utilize local graphical processing power. Examples of companies who offer these technologies are, of course Citrix with their acquisition of Ardence but also Wyse with their Wyse Streaming Manager and Neoware with their Image Manager.