Citrix pours cold water on ex-partner flame

The ex-partner, Expand Networks, alleged that Citrix had told customers that it wasn’t possible to accelerate or improve the performance of their Citrix independent computing architecture (ICA) deployments.

“Before they [Citrix] acquired Orbital Data, we used to work cohesively with them because there was no overlap,” claimed Steve O’Brien, vice president of Expand Asia Pacific.

“With the acquisition and the advent [of WANscaler] all I can repeat is what customers tell us -– that they’ve been told [by Citrix] that they’re not able to accelerate the performance of their ICA applications. Time after time we’ve demonstrated this isn’t the case.

“We have a big install base from previously poorly performing Citrix ICA applications,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien inferred that Expand had been cut out of the partnership arrangement, telling iTnews that Citrix ‘obviously created their own development plan which we’re not privy to’.

However, Citrix Systems has brushed off the allegations as a case of sour grapes, particularly as the Orbital Data acquisition -- which resulted in the Citrix WANScaler product -- was completed back in 2006.

“WANScaler is already very much a part of the Citrix product suite -- the acquisition is ancient history,” a Citrix Systems Australia spokesperson told iTnews.

“Today, both WANScaler and Branch Repeater deliver QoS for ICA traffic as well as compression, acceleration and TCP flow control that will assure the overall WAN environment in which ICA operates is optimised.

“To further illustrate that WANScaler has moved onward since the acquisition, we’ve released multiple new products, most notably the WANScaler software Client and the Branch Repeater, as well as multiple software releases,” the spokesperson said.

Citrix also suggested that ‘the available WAN acceleration and compression technologies on the market today do not offer a noteworthy benefit for ICA traffic’, calling into question the benefit of deploying technologies such as Expand’s WAN optimisation solutions.

Expand said it had not experienced similar shut-outs by Citrix ICA rivals Sun Microsystems (Sun Ray) and Microsoft (Terminal Services).

“We’ve done joint testing with both companies and they were very receptive,” said O’Brien.

“We did some work with Microsoft to demonstrate our technology and in my opinion they were quietly impressed.”

O’Brien claimed the company is also pursuing joint testing with IBM in Australia to accelerate Lotus Notes deployments.

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