November 11, 2010, Microsoft Tech•Ed Europe 2010, Berlin – ComTrade (formerly HERMES SoftLab) opens the beta program for the planned release of a ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix® XenDesktop® for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. TechEd participants in Berlin this week are invited to sign up for the beta program at the ComTrade booth (#E54). ComTrade welcomes qualifying beta program applicants from the end user and channel community.

Citrix XenDesktop 5 is a breakthrough new release that makes virtual desktops even simpler to implement and manage. The new release of XenDesktop represents an important next step to realizing the benefits that desktop virtualization can deliver across the enterprise.

As customers of all sizes move to desktop virtualization, they require solutions that integrate with their existing Microsoft management infrastructure. ComTrade, a Microsoft System Center Alliance Gold and Citrix Ready® partner, adds extensive support for market leading Citrix XenDesktop 5 with this new solution. ComTrade’s Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop is an availability and performance management solution that extends the end-to-end service monitoring capabilities of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to include Citrix XenDesktop 5 infrastructure.

“ComTrade is fully supporting Citrix’s virtual desktop vision with our new ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop,” said Gregor Smrekar, general manager for ComTrade International Business. “We started with Citrix XenServer and Citrix XenApp and  we will deliver full support for Citrix XenDesktop 5 on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager by the end of 2010. The Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop presents extensive system data to operations personnel in a standard and familiar way through the Microsoft System Center management console.”

“Citrix XenDesktop 5 is an important milestone in adding innovative capabilities, management flexibility, and helpdesk efficiency to XenDesktop to drive mainstream adoption of virtual desktops,” said Rana Kanaan, Senior Director, Product Management, Citrix Systems. “ComTrade’s Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop delivers immediate integration of these new capabilities with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, enabling IT to leverage existing management systems and skill sets for an end-to-end view of virtual desktop management.”

“Existing ComTrade’s Management Packs for Citrix XenApp and XenServer, in combination with Microsoft System Center are delivering significant benefits and value to both physical and virtualized environments of our customers,” said Maarten Goet, System Center Operations Manager MVP and CEO of INOVATIV, the System Center specialists. “With the upcoming release of Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop, these benefits are further extended to deeply address the management of virtual desktops. This integrated combination helps reduce the cost of datacenter management with end-to-end monitoring and management of servers, desktops and workloads, while assuring delivery of IT services to expected and agreed levels.”

“Microsoft’s System Center suite of products enables organizations to reduce the cost of delivering the datacenter services and applications that drive business success,” said JD Marymee, Director Strategic Alliances, Management & Security Division, Microsoft Corp. “ComTrade’s Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop on System Center platform is addressing core enterprise technologies that are a clear value-add for organizations – especially with Citrix XenDesktop 5 that represents an important milestone for the industry and has great synergy with Microsoft’s user-centric computing.”

The beta will also be on display at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2010, 8–12 November, Berlin.

ComTrade will showcase its Management Packs for Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenServer, Oracle Siebel CRM and OBI in booth #E54 at the Microsoft TechEd Europe 2010, 8–12 November. ComTrade products are also available for testing and review from the ComTrade web site at managementproducts.comtrade.com.

ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop – Key Benefits and Highlights:

Rich topology views expose XenDesktop component dependencies and allow their direct correlation with the rest of the IT infrastructure. 

Configurable monitors watch for end-user, desktop, application, and virtual infrastructure-level events that could impact the overall health and performance. The resulting alerts carry specific event information and relevant troubleshooting knowledge.

Predefined performance views and reports track the historical performance and help predict future trends.

A configurable list of actions can be taken against target XenDesktop infrastructure, truly enabling autonomous day-to-day operational management of the XenDesktop infrastructure.

The Citrix XenDesktop Management Pack brings immediate value to any Operations Staff, Citrix Specialist, or IT Manager:

•   Desktop and application availability: synthetic launch checks across the user entry points reveal issues that directly impact end-users and form the basis of service-level reports.
•   Agent-less hosting infrastructure oversight: key resources of hosted user desktops can be monitored without any agent software installed on them, ensuring ease of deployment, stability, and no impact when extending or upgrading the Citrix desktop virtualization infrastructure.
•   Improved infrastructure health: XenDesktop virtualization infrastructure availability is confirmed through rigorous connectivity probing and active service checks. Whether issues reside in the underlying virtualization layer or within a specific application, misbehaving components are quickly detected, easily isolated and rapidly solved.
•   Complete end-to-end monitoring: Performance and availability information from XenDesktop infrastructure is integrated with that of the back-end application layers. OpsMgr becomes the operations bridge for different subject matter experts. This end-to-end approach ensures coherent IT responses and efficient management of desktop delivery.