Citrix Receiver with Integrated Lync VDI Plugin

Citrix has been a steady player in the virtualization business for many years, starting with the XenApp product line, which has long been used to extend the application presentation functionality of Microsoft’s Terminal Services and Remote Desktop Services components. In more recent years, Citrix has developed the XenDesktop product line into one of the most popular VDI products on the market. XenApp and XenDesktop are often used together as complimentary products to create a comprehensive VDI solution, with Citrix Receiver used as the client component to provide access to the VDI desktop. Citrix has developed versions of Citrix Receiver for Windows, Mac, Linux, and more, making it a truly multiplatform VDI solution.

To optimize Lync 2010 with XenApp and XenDesktop solutions, Citrix released the Citrix HDX Optimization Pack for Lync 2010. The concept behind the Citrix HDX Optimization Pack for Lync 2010 was very similar to that of the VDI plugin developed by Microsoft for Lync 2013, in which the media processing bypasses the Citrix server environment and is instead handled by the client device. It is no surprise, then, that Microsoft and Citrix are working together to provide the same optimized architecture for running Lync 2013 in a XenDesktop VDI environment. The end result of this effort will be an update to the Citrix Receiver that includes the Lync VDI plugin functionality. The same presentation protocol used with most all XenApp and XenDesktop solutions, Independent Computing Architecture, will be used to present the desktop interface to the user.

After the Lync VDI plugin functionality is included in Citrix Receiver, XenDesktop users will be able to use USB-connected audio and video devices that are certified for Lync within a VDI session, along with other standard features of Citrix Receiver. For the initial release of the Lync-optimized version of Citrix Receiver, support is planned for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Use of the VDI plugin with Citrix Receiver and ICA therefore provides an advantage over Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and RDP, because this allows non-Windows endpoints to be used to connect to XenDesktop for VDI, and then use Lync with excellent performance.

The end goal is to provide a seamless Lync experience for two common remote desktop scenarios: with Lync 2013 installed as an application within a XenDesktop VDI instance, or with Lync being published as an application using XenApp. In either scenario, the Lync user experience will be optimized if the appropriate version of Receiver with integrated VDI plugin technology is used for the connection.