Citrix users on XenApp upgrade red alert

Citrix users need to start migrating to the latest edition of its application delivery platform, XenApp, as the End of Life (EoL) date for earlier versions of the product approaches.

The virtualisation giant has been calling on end users to upgrade to Citrix XenApp 6.5 since 2009, when it was announced that several versions of the product will enter EoL in March 2013.

The product is used by companies to host and manage corporate applications on central servers that can then be streamed for use on other devices.

There are very high densities of XenApp users across Europe and the UK that will be affected by this.

With less than a year to go until time is called on this first tranche of XenApp versions, end users are being urged to upgrade.

Speaking to IT Pro, David Cumberworth, vice president for sales in Northern Europe at storage optimisation vendor Atlantis Computing, said XenApp EoL could be an issue for large numbers of UK firms.

"There are very high densities of XenApp users across Europe and the UK that will be affected by this," said Cumberworth.

"[On top of this] everyone has to move off [Microsoft's] Windows Server 2003 platform by 2015. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to [move] existing XenApp farms onto the Windows 2008 version and upgrade them to XenApp 6.5."

Sam Routledge, solutions director at Citrix partner Softcat, told IT Pro that end of life warnings often go unnoticed by end users, leaving enterprises exposed to support problems.

"The issue with XenApp is that a lot of organisations have rolled it out for a particular application. It solves the problem and they almost forget it is there," he explained.

"I'm not sure many end users take much notice of product roadmaps and you would be surprised by the number of them that don't realise that parts [of their IT estate] could be heading for End of Life."