Citrix

Apparently, Mark Templeton, the CEO of Citrix, is considered a credible advisor to organizations considering the move to Service Oriented application infrastructure and a bright future of innovation and efficiency that IT can bring to business.

I really don’t see where this credibility comes from. Is Citrix is sponsoring the conference?

Templeton is the CEO of an organization that makes money by persuading people to centralize the client component of their classical client-server applications on his proprietry product. So he’s unlikely to be dispassionate about decisions over what to centralize, virtualize or leave well alone. But more importantly, Citrix is the purveyor of a technology (i.e. Remote Fat Client) that is completely at odds with the notion of developing heterogeneous Service Orientated applications. Instead, the snakeoil of its ‘PC-Anywhere for the Internet generation’ has been sold to IT managers desparate for a break from the nightmare of managing unstable and brittle client applications running on unstable and brittle PC operating systems.

At best it’s a purely tactical solution, at worst a siren song that actually leads away from a genuine strategic answer. Many an IT manager has listened to those sirens and run aground on the rocks of Citrix. And they are tough to get off.

Caveat emptor.