by Martin Fox, Philadelphia CUGC leader
June 21st – an overcast and cool day greeted us in New York City as the CUGC XL NYC got underway! Citrix users and partners from all over the greater New York region gathered for a day of networking, learning, and updates in the heart of Manhattan, just steps away from the iconic lions of the New York Public Library.
After a light breakfast (and plenty of coffee) we settled into the main conference room where Calvin Hsu delivered a report on overall Citrix strategy for the coming year. Of note, Calvin showed us, was the fact that Windows Apps still dominated the Enterprise, and that Hybrid work was here to stay – so should Hybrid infrastructure. The flexibility to work anywhere goes hand in hand with the flexibility to have workloads wherever a business needs them – On-Prem or Cloud, and the flexibility to move those workloads was a goal and driving force as cloud technologies begin maturing.
We also had a presentation updating us on Citrix Monitoring, and how there is a drive to bring better parity between director and monitor – once again, we saw the user desire for many hybrid offerings and Citrix responding to the business pressure.
Following an additional vendor presentation, we shifted into lunch, and then the meaty technical component of the afternoon – an AD Masterclass by CTP Fellow Carl Webster! Little did we know this was to be Carl’s last master class, and Carl did deliver! (Note: Missing Subnets in AD is the #1 item to remediate!).
Following Carl’s fantastic class, we dove into NetScaler (its back!) and the reasons behind splitting the teams, as well as desires to develop new hardware to reach market segmentation and opening up the metrics to other platforms to encourage usage.
Finally, due to popular demand, Carl came back for a Round 2 presentation! In addition to a standing ovation, Carl was also presented with a small plaque to honor all the work he has done for the Citrix community and to show our appreciation.
After Carl’s second round (don’t put printer shares on a DC!), we headed into a happy hour and networking event at Convene, viewing partner demos and enjoying light snacks and refreshing beverages, mingling and discussing not only what we had learned that day, but also what goals and objectives we had in our own environments over the coming weeks and months. People connected over LinkedIn, shook hands to catch up, and the group dispersed after a successful CUGC XL, and I can’t wait for the next!
