Get this slide deck from the SYN234 session at Citrix Synergy 2015 to learn about delivering Lync and other audio-video applications.

1. © 2015 Citrix
Session Description: If you’re anxious about how to deliver audio-video
applications in the world of desktop virtualization without spending a fortune on
server and network capacity, this session is for you.
In this session, you will learn:
• How HDX technologies optimize video playback and real-time video
• How to deliver Microsoft Lync and other popular video conferencing applications
• How Citrix enables the delivery of live video events in collaboration with our
ecosystem partners
1

2. © 2015 Citrix
• Source: Cisco
• Video streaming traffic is growing by leaps and bounds.
• A study from last year (2014) predicts that video traffic will increase to 80% of all
IP traffic by 2018, up from 66% in 2013
(See more at: http://www.ooyala.com/videomind/blog/cisco-sees-3x-ip-traffic-
growth-2018-79-expected-be-video#sthash.oa5PhayL.dpuf)
• Although this study focused on video streaming on the internet, we see a very
similar trend within corporate networks.
• Are you prepared?
2

3. © 2015 Citrix3

4. © 2015 Citrix
• Today’s seminar will focus HDX MediaStream and HDX RealTime but nearly all
of the HDX technologies play a part in delivering audio-video with a great
experience, with bandwidth efficiency, and at scale.
4

5. © 2015 Citrix5

6. © 2015 Citrix
• HDX MediaStream is our category for all of the Citrix technologies that enable
the delivery of videos and accompanying audio.
• HDX can deliver a great user experience with any multimedia delivery platform
and format. Flash, Windows media, HTML5 Video, QuickTime; it doesn’t matter,
HDX MediaStream handles them all.
6

7. © 2015 Citrix7

8. © 2015 Citrix8

9. © 2015 Citrix9

10. © 2015 Citrix
• The following were tested with XD7: Microsoft Lync, Office Communicator,
GoToMeeting HDFaces, Adobe Connect, Cisco WebEx, Lotus Sametime, Avaya
Scopia, CounterPath Bria (http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/10/25/counterpath-bria-is-
citrix-ready/)
• Aspect Unified IP softphone 7.1 and above is supported on XenApp/XenDesktop
(see http://www.aspect.com/resourcecatalog/aspect-unified-ip-brochure.pdf).
10

11. © 2015 Citrix
• To understand how the optimized HDX RealTime architecture works, picture a
typical softphone architecture, as illustrated on the left, with a UI layer at the top
that allows users to make and answer calls, some business logic in the middle,
and a media engine down at the bottom that handles the audio-video encode and
decode and the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) signaling. Now, imagine pulling
out the media engine from the bottom of the softphone and moving it over to the
user device so that all of the media processing runs there. In this optimized
architecture, the communications between the media engine and the layer of
software above it, which would normally happen on the same machine, now
happen over a virtual channel. But this inter-process communication consists
only of commands like “Make a call”; the actual media traffic flows directly from
the media engine on the user device to the other party to the call, or to the
conferencing bridge in the case of a multi-party call. So there is no media
processing happening on the server.
11

12. © 2015 Citrix
• March 2015: “Over 100 million people now use Microsoft Lync to communicate
for work, with 79 percent of U.S. enterprises currently using or planning to deploy
Lync for telephony.”
• 90 of the Fortune 100 use Lync.
• Over 90% of Lync customers use voice-video to some degree.
• And following Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype, the teams have merged and now
Lync has been rebranded as Skype for Business.
12

13. © 2015 Citrix
• When a user opens Lync in the virtual desktop, the media engine on the user
device is initialized and registers with the Microsoft Lync SIP server. Session
Initiation Protocol is used to place a call. Only signaling information is sent over
the ICA protocol. When the call is established, all media traffic flows directly peer-
to-peer, not going through the Citrix server at all.
• The RealTime Media Engine running on the endpoint device transmits
compressed video directly from the endpoint and avoids sending uncompressed
video over the network. This makes the solution work in WAN environments and
allows scaled deployments in LAN environments.
• The RealTime Media Engine running on the endpoint device routes audio/video
directly between clients over UDP and bypasses TCP-based VDI protocols
entirely, thereby allowing voice and video traffic to flow with minimum latency and
no delay spikes.
• RealTime Media Engine performs audio/video compression and decompression
on the endpoint and not in the Citrix server thereby significantly increasing the
scalability of the VDI / VAI deployment.
13

14. © 2015 Citrix
• http://blogs.citrix.com/2014/10/23/delivering-lync-from-xenapp-and-xendesktop/
• No other desktop virtualization vendor can provide the level of Lync support
offered by Citrix. Since there is no single delivery method that perfectly achieves
all objectives (functionality, audio-video quality, server scalability and device
support), Citrix offers three methods of delivering the Lync client from XenApp/
XenDesktop.
14

15. © 2015 Citrix15

16. © 2015 Citrix16

17. © 2015 Citrix17

18. © 2015 Citrix18

19. © 2015 Citrix19

20. © 2015 Citrix20

21. © 2015 Citrix21

22. © 2015 Citrix22

23. © 2015 Citrix23

24. © 2015 Citrix24

25. © 2015 Citrix25

26. © 2015 Citrix26

27. © 2015 Citrix27

28. © 2015 Citrix28

29. © 2015 Citrix29

30. © 2015 Citrix30

31. © 2015 Citrix31

32. © 2015 Citrix32

33. © 2015 Citrix33

34. © 2015 Citrix34

35. © 2015 Citrix35

36. © 2015 Citrix36

37. © 2015 Citrix37

38. © 2015 Citrix38

39. © 2015 Citrix39

40. © 2015 Citrix
• Notice that in addition to the proprietary RT Video and RT Audio codecs for Lync
which have been licensed from Microsoft, the RealTime Media Engine includes
an extensive set of industry-standard codecs to enable interoperability with third-
party systems such as Cisco/Tandberg and Polycom in-room video conferencing
systems.
• Bandwidth consumption is controlled by per-user policy on Lync, e.g. about 512
Kbps for VGA or 2 Mbps for HD video.
40

41. © 2015 Citrix41

42. © 2015 Citrix
• 1.7.100 is available from the Citrix Downloads site
42

43. © 2015 Citrix43

44. © 2015 Citrix44

45. © 2015 Citrix45

46. © 2015 Citrix
• Slide provided by Sandeep Prasad, Cisco Product Manager, for use at Citrix
Synergy 2015
46

47. © 2015 Citrix
• Slide provided by Sandeep Prasad, Cisco Product Manager, for use at Citrix
Synergy 2015
47

48. © 2015 Citrix
• Slide provided by Barry O’Connor, Avaya
48

49. © 2015 Citrix49

50. © 2015 Citrix
• Multicast support in XenDesktop was previously limited to Adobe Flash video
streams. XenDesktop 7 adds multicast support for Windows media formats, for
Windows and Linux devices.
• With multicast, a single stream of data can be simultaneously addressed to a
large number of data consumers, or “watch points”. In this scenario, a live video
event is delivered with a single data stream to the branch office, and multiple
users simultaneously receive that feed thanks to client-side content fetching.
50

51. © 2015 Citrix51

52. © 2015 Citrix52

53. © 2015 Citrix53

54. © 2015 Citrix54