There are several things that could hamper business adoption of Chromebooks, and one concrete example is losing comfortable access to desktop programs that many have grown used to. Applications like MS Office, Adobe and others that employees and students mostly use to be efficient.
A week ago, Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager, Chrome for Business, blogged that the Citrix Receiver for Chromebooks, based on HTML5 standards will be available soon at the Chrome Web Store. We do hope that it will come this summer, although no definite date has been slated.
Google has been telling us, especially the organizations, that we won’t have to repurchase or rewrite existing applications when moving to Chromebooks. The Chrome browser with Citrix virtualization software will just stream applications like Adobe Photoshop.
Meaning, enterprise customers can just use Chromebooks with the SAP, Oracle or Microsoft applications when they need to get the job done.
VMware is also working hand in hand with Google to build VMware View that will work similar to the Citrix. However, there’s no information as to when it will be completed, but to have another option makes the Chromebook a bit more compelling, don’t you think?
Why wait for Citrix Receiver? In any case, in order to use Citrix Receiver you will also need either XenApp or XenDesktop to publish the Windows apps or virtual desktops. A simpler and less costly alternative that is available NOW is Ericom AccessNow, a pure HTML5 RDP client that enables Chromebook/ChromeOS users to connect to any RDP host, including Terminal Server (RDS Session Host), physical desktops or VDI virtual desktops – and run their applications and desktops in a browser.
This means that you can use AccessNow for instant, turnkey web-enablement of most any Windows application. Running entirely within a browser, AccessNow works natively with Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer (with Chrome Frame plug-in), Firefox and any other browser with HTML5 and WebSockets support.
Ericom‘s AccessNow does not require Java, Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX, or any other underlying technology to be installed on end-user devices – an HTML5 browser is all that is required.
For more information, and to download an eval of Ericom AccessNow please visit:
http://www.ericom.com/html5_rdp_client.asp?URL_ID=708