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Technology Stocks : Citrix Systems (CTXS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Redman who wrote (7803)	4/11/2000 7:15:00 PM
From: Redman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9068

After reading the Painewebber upgrade, a question popped up. Does anybody know what "cloudware player" is all about. Used here, it sounds like a new product. But, it could also be a generic term I am not used to. Any help is appreciated. Red PaineWebber Initiates Citrix At Buy, Novell At Neutral (CTXS) (NewsTraders.com) -- Citrix Systems (CTXS) was the apple of PaineWebber analyst Don Young's eye this morning, as he initiated the stock with a "buy" rating and a $115 price goal, while adding it to the brokerage's "Highlighted Stocks" list. Young believes Citrix's CloudWare player is exploiting a number of trends, including thin client computing and application service provider infrastructure. The analyst noted that the recent pullback in the application server provider's shares gives investors an attractive entry point, at a P/E ratio less than twice the company's growth rate. With an eye towards the firm's expansion, Young said Citrix is moving beyond its Windows-based stronghold to Unix applications and wireless clients. For 2000 and 2001, Young established EPS estimates of $0.86 and $1.10, respectively.

To: Redman who wrote (7803)	4/17/2000 5:36:00 PM
From: Riskmgmt	Respond to of 9068

Red and thread, Interesting article someone e-mailed me. Citrix VideoFrame Delivers Streaming Video to Thin Clients April 17, 2000 By Mark Andrew Seltzer It may not be as flashy as MTV streaming live on your desktop, but Citrix Systems' VideoFrame 1.0 will indeed liven up your thin client. Although thin-client computers perform many of the features of full-blown desktop PCs, they lag in their ability to play Microsoft AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) and other video files. It's true that videos are most closely associated with games and other nonproductive applications, but in fact they can be very useful in the workplace. Streaming video applications include online training (with products such as Lotus ScreenCam), corporate instructional videos and sales presentations. However, at present, when companies run videos over typical thin-client platforms, they run into performance problems. VideoFrame changes this by streaming videos over Citrix's ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) protocol using the vendor's proprietary video codec, which helps to compress and optimize videos for a specified target client bandwidth. Instead of video playback within the ICA session, VideoFrame creates a new connection to the VideoFrame server using Citrix's ICA Streaming Channel technology. When paired with products supporting ICA, such as Citrix's MetaFrame or WinFrame software, VideoFrame streams smooth multimedia presentations over a company's LAN to its thin-client systems. I tested a beta version of VideoFrame that came packaged with software to encode raw AVI files using Citrix's video codec, as well as with VideoFrame 1.0 server to serve the media to ICA clients using ICA Streaming Channel. The beta package I received from Citrix also included an assortment of video clips of varying quality that could be used to test performance. Preproduction In Network Computing's Real-World Labs© at Syracuse University, I installed VideoFrame server on two machines: a 200-MHz Pentium system with 64 MB of RAM--which met the minimum system requirements--and a higher-end 400-MHz system with a fast SCSI-2 hard disk and 128 MB of RAM. The setup of both the server and the encoder software went smoothly, and soon I was encoding sample AVI files to be served by VideoFrame. The encoding method adds Citrix's codecs to the files so they're optimized for use with systems running Citrix WinFrame or MetaFrame clients. Once the files were encoded, I used the Distribution Wizard to distribute encoded video, which entails picking the VideoFrame server on which you want the video hosted. The encoded AVI file and an associated CVI (Citrix Video Information, which is used for publishing the video) file are then transferred to the VideoFrame server. During the tests, the only difference I noticed between the two systems is that encoding was much faster on the 400-MHz machine than on the 200-MHz unit. In fact, Citrix officials note that a one-minute clip being encoded on a 400-MHz Pentium II system should take 12 minutes 20 seconds, while the same clip on a 200-MHz Pentium machine should take a little more than an hour. Direct to Video I connected to our 200-MHz Pentium MetaFrame server to publish the videos. I ran the Published Application Manager on the MetaFrame server to make the presentation available to viewers via their Citrix Program Neighborhood. Within the Published Application Manager, I entered the path for the video I wanted available to clients, and selected its CVI connection file. Finally, I specified which servers and users would have access to the video. It should be noted that this beta version of VideoFrame worked only with the latest Win32 ICA client (Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0 or 2000) and the current version of Microsoft's Windows Media Player or ActiveMovie for video playback. When I first tried VideoFrame's playback from a thin-client connection, I expected the video to open from within the thin-client window, but found that when the application was launched from either the desktop or the Program Neighborhood, a new ICA connection to the VideoFrame server (through port 7000) was opened instead. The videos I tested streamed very well, without any noticeable delays or hitches. I also tried running the same videos within the ICA session without using the VideoFrame server, and there were noticeable delays, which wasn't a complete surprise. Mobile Movies Now, you might ask how VideoFrame will perform for a mobile user connecting from a less-than-ideal dial-up connection. Citrix answers this by letting videos be encoded with target bandwidths, so an administrator can publish and stream videos optimized for specific types of connections, such as modem, ISDN and direct LAN. The encoded file will contain the appropriate compression specifications for the bandwidth(s) for which you're encoding. Citrix's VideoFrame goes a long way in shoring up an obvious weakness in thin clients.