Application delivery is the delivery of applications. This is not as simple as it sounds; the actual mechanics and details of delivering applications is wide ranged and complex. If you are familiar with Citrix XenApp, formerly Citrix Presentation Server that was formerly MetaFrame for Windows, then you have known about delivering applications for quite some time. In fact, not only can XenApp deliver applications, but it can also deliver, that's right, desktops. Desktop virtualization is not really all that new; it is just newly popular as the virtualization of data center resources is booming.

Citrix made some acquisitions, rebuilt some key pieces of technology, and released Citrix XenDesktop to appeal to this burgeoning marketplace, specifically for desktop delivery or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). As the product line moved forward, Citrix made a major architectural change in its widely popular XenApp product and merged it with XenDesktop. A major...