I was excited to see more innovation coming out of XTS around Citrix configuration and historical usage reporting and analysis.  These guys are one of the few vendors laser focused on Citrix XenApp, the old school Citrix technology still providing for the majority of Citrix’s revenues.

XTS is releasing Introspect 5.0 on March 9th, 2009.  And the company is going to offer the product in three editions.

The entry level is the Standard Edition for configuration reporting.  If any of you don’t want to deal with raw MFCOM reporting, this product has it all built into a nice user interface.  And they are packaging this up into an affordable price for a limited time, $499 USD per Citrix farm.

The Enterprise Edition takes configuration reporting to another level with report scheduling, automated distribution and integration with Active Directory.  What I found really useful is the capability to capture daily snapshots of configurations from the Citrix Data Store.  With their new "diff" reporting feature, you can compare configurations from one date to another, using any type of filter so you can focus in on certain properties.  This has great potential for easier analysis for troubleshooting so you can see what configuration has changed since the problem started happening. It also helps with physical to virtual projects so you can create baselines for before and after comparisons.

And finally, XTS offers the Platinum Edition which takes all the great configuration reporting in the prior editions and adds on to their traditional strength of providing a unique, data warehouse approach to creating historical usage reports.  This isn’t more real-time monitoring, but instead, provides what I see as more management friendly historical trending reports.  These usage reports can be used for periodic infrastructure planning reviews and provide the catalyst needed for gaining approval for server virtualization projects.  Another unique report that Introspect produces is for charge-backs that are built from Citrix XenApp metrics, such as concurrent or unique users. 

I had a chance to briefly catch up with Eric Spiegel, the CEO of XTS and asked him why they've focused on this niche? 

"We feel there is tremendous, underserved opportunity in the Citrix XenApp market," said Spiegel.  "Every customer and reseller we show these reports to has the same comment, something like 'I have been waiting for reports like this for a long time!' and 'These reports are going to make managing Citrix so much easier.'  That feedback inspires us to keep innovating in this space."

To learn more about XTS Introspect 5.0, a Citrix Ready certified solution, you can visit www.xtsinc.com.   You can also visit their booth at Citrix Synergy this coming May.

You can also visit the XTS virtual "open house" event taking place on March 18, 2009 to experience first-hand the new features of Introspect 5.0 and how it can enable cost savings in any size Citrix farm.  To register, select one of the following events:

March 18, 2009 - 9 am EST - Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/687185372 
March 18, 2009 - 4 pm EST - Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/542730771