The question of VDI use cases, customer awareness, and Desktop Virtualization has been a hot topic lately at Citrix. Harry Labana's blog post did a great job describing the differences in Desktop Virtualization and Server Virtualization. In addition to the positive reviews, a few commenters have also brought up some scenarios we have been considering but have not made available to date. Specifically we have been discussing ways to make HDX more pervasive and useful to IT Pros and users. HDX has significant benefits and we want the broader industry to try it out and get a taste of XenDesktop.

Many in the community may recall a Citrix project called PortICA, which led to a component of XenDesktop providing a direct ICA connection from a Client OS ( XP or Vista ) to any endpoint with the ICA client. Outside of Citrix developers & testers (and a few others :-)  ) who find this very useful, we have not opened up this standalone capability to the world. If we did make this available, meaning an MSI including the enhanced HDX features that could be installed inside a client OS, which could connect directly (no broker) to any device with the Citrix Receiver and proper network configuration. The question is what would you use it for? Would this lead to increased XenDesktop adoption? Some of the XenDesktop product and demo scenarios we have considered or heard are listed below. Please let us know your vote and help describe some new use cases as well.

Citrix Community: http://community.citrix.com/x/toS8B