As a quick recap, I looked at the Citrix Receiver iPhone app, and was impressed with the experience. It's not a VNC or RDP solution; Citrix has created a client that, by use of a highly optimized communication protocol, lets you view apps running in the EC2 cloud (for the layman, that means "you see it on your phone but it's actually running somewhere else") without installing them on your phone. This means that you can build an application out of any technology, deploy it to the remote server infrastructure, and access it on your phone, or computer, or any device that runs the Citrix Receiver. The technology is optimized for this use; there's no awkward, blocky screen redraws, no browser toolbars, etc. A properly designed application appears to be running as a full-screen application on the phone, no matter what technology it's built out of. This suite of tools is branded "XenApps" for the most part; I'm not one of their marketers and know there's more to it, but "Xen..." is a big Citrix branding buzzword these days.
It's amazing how many people responded negatively, clearly without trying the Citrix Receiver demo. For the most part the issues are around the rampant abuse of Flash all over the web; poorly programmed banners, autoplay video players, that sort of thing. I concede: the web is full of bad Flash, and if that's the extent of your experience, you'll probably be pretty close minded about the subject. I've been a Flash developer for a long time though, and have never programmed a banner. I work on enterprise-level applications that make companies money; I've built applications that you've more than likely used, and that have helped people sell companies, and is currently helping a startup stay in business. Flash development, with Flex and Air, is stronger than ever and isn't going anywhere. Hating it is a waste of time.
To continue my rant, I'll tell you one thing for sure: I don't want to be in the business of porting those apps to every different platform on earth. Yes, I could make money doing it. But it's boring and doesn't move me along to the next new project. People say, "forget Flash just build an iPhone app". Erm...what about Android? And Blackberry? And Symbian? And Windows Mobile? And Windows desktop? And OSX Desktop? Hire all those developers....maintain all that code...I've got better things to do. I want my app to have as much reach as humanly possible with as little work as possible, and porting the code to everywhere isn't a good strategy.
Note: Citrix said that for Blackberry and Android clients, we have to "stay tuned". The guys on the call wouldn't nail in any dates or promises about this, but they didn't say "no". I'd assume that, considering how attractive this technology could be to corporations, a Blackberry client would be a no brainer. There is currently one for the iPhone, Symbian, and Windows Mobile 6.1.
The Citrix Receiver, backed by the Citrix technology on the server side, is the sort of thing that makes this possible. Again I'll say, and Chris Fleck, VP of Solutions Development for Citrix agreed readily, that it's not for every kind of app; if you have something that requires lots of real-time graphical updates, like a MMORG or something, you should probably consider going native. But that's the minority of apps; 75% of the stuff I've seen in the iPhone app store, or more, could be served using the Citrix technology, which would give the developers the opportunity to deploy it to all the new platforms coming out.
One big thing though; the Citrix Receiver is branded Citrix. This was a big downside, and I told the Citrix guys so; if I'm MTV, or Thomson Reuters, or CNN, or Disney, I'm not going to want my front-end gateway UI to be branded Citrix. I want people searching their platform's app store for my brand, and when they pull it down, I want to see my logo on their phone. Here's what it currently looks like:
To this, Citrix responded, "that's a real valid point. We're going to look into this". One of their developers that was on the call seemed to think it would be a no brainer to implement. So, from what I can see, Citrix is going to enable this. So, you brand the Citrix Receiver as your own...
...YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO BUILD IT. You just brand it and get it in the [ fill in mobile platform ] app store.
Then you take your code base, deploy it to the Citrix solution on the EC2 cloud, and that's it. Anybody with the receiver can use your app, no matter what technology it's built out of. It just stuns me that people don't see the potential for this. If Citrix really puts in the time and makes this solution rock solid, it could very well represent a significant direction of the next wave of mobile device use.
Citrix showed me how easy it is to do it; in fact, it looks so easy, and so cost effective to get up and running, that I'm going to try it with my Planet Sudoku app. They even have a little app shell, called "AppViewer" which you can embed your tech in, that takes care of the full-screen look-and-feel for you.
Initially, I was going to port this thing to the iPhone, but now, as an experiment, I'm going to just refactor the UI to fit the iPhone, use the AppViewer shell, and deploy it with the Citrix solution; you'll be able to play my Sudoku client on your iPhone in a lot less time than if I retooled the whole thing to Objective C. More blogging to come on that one I'm sure.
Is it really that easy? I don't know for sure, but as far as I can tell, this is a heck of a lot easier than porting the app to Objective C. In their own words (note that where they say "Windows", you can sub in "apps that run on Windows", like Java, Flash, Flex, Air, Silverlight, etc.):
"While unmodified Windows applications can be delivered to mobile devices via Citrix XenApp, XenApp also provides an excellent platform for delivering custom mobile applications. Citrix is seeing interest in this area from a number of it's ISV partners. The concept is to build the application using tools normally used to build full Windows applications, but simply design the user interface with the smaller screen size and resolutions of mobile devices as a design consideration. The concept is to reskin the UI of larger applications with a smaller form factor UI. As long as the custom mobile application can be published on Citrix XenApp, it can be delivered to mobile devices with the Citrix Receiver installed."
So, if this indie software developer can make this work, I'd pretty much say that anybody can, not matter what your reach is. You don't need deep corporate pockets; I don't actually know this for a fact yet, but I'm optimistic, and am actually trying it now, so I'll let you know.
For more info on this topic, and/or to learn how to get involved in this sort of development, visit the Citrix developer community site, and take a look at the Tips and Tricks sections.
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