This blog post title can look a little agressive but that's intended 

Why ? Simply because this post is my 2 cents regarding the marketing vs technical thing and reflects my feedback from the "trenches".

I'm now working with Citrix products for years and I've followed the move from Winframe to Metaframe then Presentation server, Access Suite and Now XenApp / XenDesktop Platinum.

Every new product release (mainly XenApp) was really expected because it was adding lots of highly requested features.

Unfortunately, starting with XenApp 5.0 for Windows 2008, even if new features were added, some (very important ones) were removed without notice although I did not see many articles / posts about it.

The fact is that XenApp 5.0 for Windows 2008 is not that much deployed and regarding my customers that's mainly because of these features removal.

Which Features ? : I'm thinking of Installation Manager, Application Isolation, Resource Manager and some other ones.

Let's now take the marketing answers and my comments :

Installation Manager

=> We do have an installation manager for XenApp 5.0 / Windows 2K8 : Yes that's true.

"From the Trenches" : IM is now just a set of Powershell scripts creating Windows Scheduler tasks to install apps. If you do not have private hotfixes, .mst files for example are not working.  Former IM packages are not compatible, all should be now packaged into the .msi format. Imagine what could an existing customer say if he has to repackage hundreds of apps and how much it'll cost ?

Application Isolation

=> We now have Streaming so AIE is not useful anymore : False.

"From the Trenches" : AIE was really useful for specific applications. Isolating some objects (files / registry entries) is not the same as streaming the whole app. For some customer, this feature is really missing because it was allowing non compatible applications to run on XenApp Platforms. If such customers are migrating, the applications won't work anymore.

Resource Manager

=> We now have EdgeSight so RM is not useful anymore : False.

"From the Trenches" : EdgeSight is more powerful than RM, however RM had a billing related function that allows companies to bill the service against consumed resources. EdgeSight does not have this features and moreover in our SaaS or DaaS World such a feature is really missing.

So yes we do have nice features with Xenapp 5.0 / W2K8 like personal folder redirection, XPS Printing or Preferential Load Balancing (XA Platinum Only) but basically how come can an editor remove features that were provided before and thus used by customers ? It's hard for me to understand.

Upcoming XenApp release : Parra

Next example : The upcoming xenApp release (Parra) : MFCOM has been removed (actually it is still there but not exposed anymore).

=> Answer : You now have to go to PowerShell

"From the Trenches" : I personnaly like powershell and the XenApp CmdLets are really more user friendly than MFCOM scripting through .vbs.

However, Citrix Ready Partners and tools developpers (like me) have relied on MFCOM and decided to work with it because it was a standard accross all versions and basically every new XenApp versions could be managed with some few new interfaces.

Removing it, almost without notice, means that everything needs to be redevelopped. And I'm not talking about my tools (because basically switching to PowerShell Classes is for now just a matter of time) but to every customer that has invested time (and money) in building scripts or tools and also all Citrix Ready Partners that are relying on MFCOM for their products to interface with XenApp (VisionApp, RES Software, ...).

So why not keep it ? Because from a marketing point a view MFCOM is outdated (although it's still present and used by the new console) and powershell is better.

The best thing could have been to keep both ...

For me, all that kind of facts reflects the move from a technical company to a marketing one, and even if marketing will help to grow sales in a short term view, the technical foundations should still be there, moreover when they help to sell projects (AIE for example, allowing to deal with non compatible apps) and that's something I really hope to see in Citrix future releases : Add new features, enhance existing one but without removing previously integrated features, mainly like they were doing before.

I know products have to evolve, but the price should not be loosing important features because "Evolve to get less" is something really hard for a customer to understand.