Citrix Details Product Upgrades

Feature Release 3 of MetaFrame XP for Windows, scheduled to ship in the first half of 2003, will support Microsoft's upcoming Windows .Net Server 2003 and will add improvements to printing and Web page viewing, said Bob Kruger, CTO and senior vice president of products at Citrix, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"Any time we can provide a faster, more reliable product, our partners benefit," Kruger said.

Feature Release 3 adds SpeedScreen browser acceleration, a Citrix technology that caches Web images to speed up the time they take to load. Users will also have the option of canceling an image load in progress, Kruger said.

The upgrade also includes Citrix Universal Print Driver II, which supports color, high-resolution printing up to 600 dots-per-inch. The previous universal print driver supported monochrome printing up to 300 dots-per-inch, said Russ Naples, vice president and general manager of Citrix's client/server business unit.

A preview of Feature Release 3 is available to Citrix Platinum and Gold channel partners as well as customers and other business partners through mid-January, the company said.

Citrix is also planning an upgrade to its NFuse Elite portal server, launched in June.

NFuse Elite Feature Release 1 will include improved security features with integration to the vendor's forthcoming Citrix Secure Gateway 2.0, said Jim McGrath, senior manager of product and technical marketing at Citrix.

The gateway supports SSL encryption of data over the Internet without requiring a VPN, McGrath said.

Feature Release 1 will also include improved management capabilities and support for Java-based clients, McGrath said.

Citrix also announced Service Pack One for NFuse Elite, available now, which increases performance and adds support for Content Delivery Agents, used to integrate content into the portal, for applications such as Lotus iNotes, Microsoft Outlook and Windows NetMeeting.