Citrix Systems, Inc. NASDAQ is a multinational corporation founded in 1989, that provides server and desktop virtualization, networking, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing technologies including Xen open source products.
Software as a service is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.
Desktop virtualization (sometimes called client virtualization, as a concept, separates a personal computer desktop environment from a physical machine using the client–server model of computing. Some virtualization platforms allow the user to simultaneously run
multiple virtual machines on local hardware, such as a laptop, using hypervisor
technology. Virtual machine images are created and maintained on a
central server, and changes to the desktop VMs are propagated to all
user machines through the network, thus combining both the advantages of
portability afforded by local hypervisor execution and of central image
management.
Technically, Desktop Virtualization
involves encapsulating and delivering either access to an entire
information system environment or the environment itself to a remote
client device. The client device may use an entirely different hardware
architecture from that used by the projected desktop environment, and
may also be based upon an entirely different operating system.
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility. Cloud computing provides computation, software, data access, and storage
services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical
location and configuration of the system that delivers the services.
Parallels to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid,
wherein end-users consume power without needing to understand the
component devices or infrastructure required to provide the service.
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