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First Microsoft-Citrix Branch Office Box (BOB) To Be Released By The End Of 2007

Friday, 08 June 2007 by Michel Roth

The New Zealand Citrix User Group mentions that from the iForum in Edinburgh, Mark Tempelton annouced that the first release of the the branch office solution Citrix is working with Microsoft on (project Evergreen) should be expected in the later part of this year. Mark Templeton said Project Evergreen will combine Citrix's WANscaler network booster with Microsoft Windows services to create Branch Office in a Box (BOB) and help organisations with their data centre consolidation plans.

Troy Trenchard, a vice president of Citrix's application networking group told Regdeveloper that the new device will fill a gap in Citrix's product range and provide customers with an additional option for delivering applications to the desktop. "Our goal is to deliver the BOB by the end of this year. It will package up key Windows services, DNS and DHCP and the WANscaler in an integrated unit. Organisations going through data centre consolidation will be able to get WAN optimisation and local services from the BOB."

He went on to say that the BOB will enable branch office users to continue to use local Windows services such as web access and local file and print operations even when disconnected from their data centre application. The BOB will be branded as a Citrix "appliance" product and pricing will be announced at product launch time.

As you probably know, Citrix isn't the only one Microsoft is teaming up with to deliver these branch office solutions. A month ago, Microsoft and Packeteer announced a joint product strategy to deliver the Windows-based branch office IT solution: the Packeteer iShaper. Packeteer is of course one of Citrix' biggest competitors in the WAN Acceleration market space. It makes sense that these technologies should be "different enough" in the end but it is too early to tell. The Microsoft-Packeteer device is being described as "iShaper combines the best of real-time WAN optimization, monitoring and shaping with wide area file services (WAFS) and key Microsoft services in a single, easy-to-manage unified branch office appliance. iShaper streamlines operational complexity, enables LAN-like delivery of critical business applications and greatly improves centralized access to data for branch workers".

Different enough? Time will tell.