Citrix users on XenApp upgrade red alert

In a statement to IT Pro, John Fanelli, vice president of product marketing, enterprise desktops and applications at Citrix, said the need to upgrade should come as no surprise to most users.

"Citrix maintains and regularly communicates End of Life schedules for all our software products with each new release," said Fanelli. "In fact, our major release lifecycles are generally four and a half years, which exceeds the industry standard for being enterprise-ready, based on Gartner research."

Even so, the vendor is encouraging end users to crack on with XenApp 6.5 upgrades because of the extra functionality this version offers.

"XenApp 6.5 enhances the end user experience, [has] more than 150 new features and [has] an interface optimised for mobile devices, empowering end users to be more productive with their tablets and smartphones," said Fanelli.

"We consistently listen to and work with our customers to establish migration timelines that suit their needs, and encourage them to migrate to the latest version so they can take advantage of the new innovations being delivered in our products," he said.

Meanwhile, Cumberworth said IT departments should seize on XenApp upgrades to ramp up their adoption of virtual desktops and other related technologies.

"Most XenApp implementations have remained on physical servers, as they were put in place before large-scale virtualisation projects took off," he said. "So moving to a virtual platform, as part of an upgrade, is seen as a smart investment."