Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization

Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization

Michael Silva Business & IT Consultant

• Overview • Financial Executive Pains • The IT Dilemma • Financial Reporting and Consolidation Applications • Thin Clients • Microsoft Windows Terminal Server™ • Citrix Metaframe™

• Total Cost of Ownership •ICA® Defined • Publishing Applications • Web-enabling Applications • CFO Vision™ Considerations • Quaker Chemical Case • A Swiss Manufacturing Company Case • The ASP Model and Conclusions

• Reporting Problems • Month-end close too long • Mergers and Acquisitions • Complex and multiple ERP systems • Data Problems • Spreadsheet solutions error prone • Coherency • Integrity • Portability

• Data Problems • Multiple sources, locations • Lack of tools • Current BI Applications • Poor fit for the Finance function • Integration Issues • Application Deployment and Support

• Financial Reporting and Consolidation • 17 Vendors in the market • 0 are shipping full web-enabled apps • None are geared towards geographically dispersed organizations

• What is a thin client? • Networked to a server • Programs originate on server • Programs execute on server • Display is on client

• Windows NT Terminal Server Edition • Microsoft’s answer to thin client computing • Allows any Windows client to run 32 bit apps on the server • Supposed to lower TCO • Limitations • Non-Windows clients can’t access server • Not scalable • Limited Management Tools

• Founded in 1989 by Ed Iacobucci • Former IBM Executive for OS/2 • Wanted to make server based computing for Intel plaform • Formed Citrix when IBM rejected his plans • $403 M in revenue FY99 • 100% of Fortune 100 • 3.5 M current licensed users

• Citrix Metaframe Components • Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) • Metaframe Management Tools • Client Desktop Integration • Load Balancing and Scalability • Heterogeneous Computing • Management

• Hard Costs • Hardware • Software Licenses • Installation Effort • Soft Costs • Hardware Maintenance • Application Support • Help Desk Support

• 200 different client type devices (25?) • Digital Independence • Three part server application technology • Metaframe Server • Presentation Services Protocol • ICA Client

• Not a desktop replacement • Simplifies User Interface • Control over applications deployed • User and Group Security • Available via ICA Master Browser • Not the same as NT Browser • Similar in that it needs gateway services when routers are in the network

• Publishing Apps on the Web • The Metaframe Server • The Web Server • The Web Page • The ICA Client • Lowering TCO • Simplified Environment • Easier Management and Support

• Not intended for multi-user clients • Definitely multi-user server • Configuration Changes • Autoexec.sas • Config.sas • Optimizing Graphics • Removing the splash screen • Other graphics

• Distributed Geographic Environment • 21 locations • All will be using CFO Vision • Some have slow connections • Propsosed EVAS Solution • Enterprise-wide Virtual Application Suite • Citrix Metaframe Server Farm

Citrix Metaframe™ (cont)

• Swiss Manufacturing Company • Geographically Dispersed • Lack of IT staff • Outsourced CFO Vision to an ASP • Dedicated hardware • VPN Access via Internet • Monthly fees vs. dedicated staff

• SAS Licensing model for ASPs? • Leasing applications from third parties • Increase market share by accessing first time customers • Move maintenance to the hands of the experts • Bypass IT departments

• FRC Vendors need to address TCO • Citrix Metaframe Implementation as viable alternative in geographically dispersed environments • Web-enablement not the only factor in choosing an FRC vendor

Mike Silva email: [email protected]

Introduction New Economy moves ever faster, this problem can only intensify. Many organizations today are faced with a multifaceted challenge in business and The IT Dilemma financial reporting and management. These challenges present themselves in that To further exacerbate the problem, many IT organizations are becoming more distributed departments are struggling with various data by nature due to mergers and acquisitions sources, which are extracted from the and Information Technology presents more existing ERP systems. Often, these complexity and choices in ERP solutions. processes are convoluted and are based on This dual pronged atmosphere causes text file extraction into Microsoft Excel or executives, managers and financial staff similar spreadsheet packages. Price members pain but also the IT department Waterhouse Coopers completed a study and business users who rely on this showing that 90% of all financial data stored information for decision making suffer as in spreadsheets has major errors. This fact well. alone is enough for not only the IT department but also the entire organization A difficult life for financial executives? to take heed in using this information for anything even remotely strategic. Financial groups in many organizations struggle to bring together the various Furthermore, IT professionals responsible informational sources from far-flung for Financial Reporting and Consolidation subsidiaries and create meaningful reports (FRC) packages are finding that the promise when they are needed and where they are of true thin client applications are still not in needed. Why is there such a high level of the market place. Although some report frustration in this area? Finance executives writers have developed web-based are used to having the prestigious position solutions, it should be noted that FRC of providing strategic input in a myriad of applications are far more complex then most business decisions. Formerly, it was business oriented report writing. These sometimes easier to force IT decisions applications need to take into consideration concerning financial management the five types of financial reports: operational software. However, nowadays with so many cross-border mergers, it is ! Listing nearly impossible to predict or determine ! Document what type of software will be in use at a ! Statement merged or acquired company. Even organic ! Consolidation growth organizations have a hard time ! Analytical forcing subsidiaries to use operational software packages not designed for the line Simple table listings and documents can be of business they are engaged in, or do not fit easily accommodated by the usual Report the regional requirements. Writer vendors. These types contain simple listing of numbers and perhaps special fonts Moreover, the average month end close for for certain applications. However, US companies is 8-15 days and the average 1 statements, consolidation and Analytical for UK companies is 10-20 days . reports require financial intelligence not Obviously, the turnaround time for delivering usually found in these applications. These financial information to executives and reports are much more complex and require strategic decision makers is clearly lagging formatting, formula creation, matrix listing, behind the demand for this information. On balance sheet and income statement top of all this is the demand for data intelligence and the ability to view data in a coherency, integrity and portability. As the multidimensional format2.

1 2 Salt, Deborah, PriceWaterhouseCoopers Report, McKie, Stewart, The New Paradigm for Report Consolidation Solutions 1999 Writers, Business Finance Magazine, October 1998 ©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected] Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization

Traditionally IT departments have been quite arises, how does a distributed organization satisfied providing the first two types of ensure maximum benefit from implementing reports to standard business users. In a fat financial reporting and consolidation general, these users have been quite happy package. with the solutions. However, as the move to introduce the products into the financial What is a Thin Client? group, they find out quite quickly that these products do not have the capabilities Information Technology is probably one needed for the latter three types of reports. industry where there are sometimes more opinions than options. The definition of thin Fat FRC Applications client is one that has been debated for a while now. By definition, it is actually a There are currently 17 listed vendors of FRC hardware device which was introduced application vendors in the Business Finance several years ago called a Network Magazine list of financial consolidation and Computer. Its state is stored on the server reporting packages. All of these vendors and the client merely loads it on the desktop. have struggled with bringing true thin client It should also be noted that X Windows and applications to market due to the limitations ICA clients fall into the thin client category of current technologies such as HTML, Java, as well, although all of the processing takes JavaScript and ActiveX. place on the server and only the graphics are sent back to the client. Naturally, this is changing as new releases of developer’s toolkits arrive giving the Figure 1 depicts thin and thick clients. vendors the needed development packages for creating these applications. The following major FRC vendors are shipping or planning to ship web enabled FRC applications:

Hyperion Systems – cobbled together solution combining Arbor Essbase products and Hyperion Enterprise with Spiderman to create a pseudo web enabled application.

Cognos – Again Cognos has the ability to use PowerPlay for the web with Cognos Financials although it is not advertised as so.

Comshare – Strictly a Microsoft Windows The confusion begins when certain software application with no mention of web vendors claim thin client ability when in fact, enablement. in most cases, it is not the software vendor who has developed anything to do with thin Longview Solutions - Kahlix for consolidation clients. Ensuring n-tier client/server based and reporting is also a Microsoft Windows computing and thin clients are two separate based application but can work with static issues. The vendors mentioned in this HTML files. paper are concentrating on n-tier client/server applications which can be SAS Institute – CFO Vision in it’s present accessed by thin clients, PCs, and as the release also does not provide a dynamic title of this paper suggests, ICA clients. web enabled client but does have static web reporting and an experimental OLAP viewer Microsoft Windows Terminal Server called Open Olap. Windows Terminal Server is Microsoft’s As shown above, all of the major vendors answer to the thin client computing trend. It are shipping fat clients. The question now allows any Windows client to access 32 bit

©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected] Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization applications running on an NT 4.0 server. Currently, TSE requires that administrators Windows Terminal Server Edition (TSE) install a second server separately and main design goal is to lower the total cost of duplicate the functionality resulting in twice ownership of desktop computers. It is the management and twice the cost. debatable as to whether there is a blanket reduction in total cost of ownership. Secondly, TSE lacks support for However, there is certainly a reduction in heterogeneous computing environments. As ownership costs for line of business mentioned previously, organizations are applications and geographically dispersed finding that through mergers and applications such as FRC packages and acquisitions the IT environment inherited is particularly for CFO Vision from SAS not always compatible with the one of the Institute. head office. This should not cause delay in getting key financial data to managers and Unfortunately, TSE is limited in its technical executives simply because the ability to allow non-Windows clients to environments are different. access the server. In addition, there are scalability issues, and lack of management Lastly, TSE is lacking management tools for and configuration tools. Citrix Metaframe configuring and controlling server application adds to the TSE model to provide these farms. Metaframe provides tools for services and more. managing groups of servers and published applications for sets of users. These tools Citrix Metaframe assist immensely in deploying enterprise applications in large organizations. Citrix Systems was founded by Edward Iacobucci in 1989. Iacobucci was a former IBM executive responsible for OS/2 Total Cost of Ownership development. He came up with the idea of server based computing from the mainframe In determining TCO for a thin-client world and wanted to move it to the OS/2 computing project such as with CFO Vision platform. However, IBM management did and Citrix Metaframe, one has to calculate not believe that a market existed for server two types of costs. based computing on the Intel platform so he formed his own company to do just that. The first one is the hard costs associated with the project. These are straightforward Citrix Metaframe contains several key and pertain to the purchase price of the components, which make it unique. hardware and software needed to complete the project. In addition, the organization ! Independent Computing may not need to purchase new desktop Architecture (ICA) computers, thus further reducing hard costs ! Metaframe Management Tools in the project. ! Client Desktop Integration Second, the soft costs must be calculated. Often, organizations make the critical Although TSE provides complete multi-user mistake of only calculating hard costs to functionality on its own, the three determine the TCO of a project. However, shortcomings mentioned in the previous the soft costs can far outstrip hard costs, section hinder its adoption as an enterprise- especially in high cost labor countries. wide solution. Firstly, Metaframe provides These costs are associated with the scalability through load balancing. TSE hardware maintenance, application support claims that administrators can run up to a and end-user support. 100 users on a single server. In actuality, many administrators would be reluctant to TSE and Metaframe reduce soft costs by do this because it provides no fault tolerance treating hardware maintenance costs similar or redundancy. A single hardware failure to desktop maintenance costs. The server would result in lost user productivity. farm is like a desktop in that if one fails it is

Application support costs are reduced by Presentation Services Protocol - The ICA reducing the time it takes to deploy and protocol bundles and transports information support new applications. Administrators such as keystrokes, mouse actions and can make new applications available to screen updates to the ICA client and also every user more quickly and now have only receives and processes information that the one instance of the application to maintain. clients have sent back. Testing and evaluation time is increased, as multiple hardware/software platforms need ICA Client – The client receives the ICA not be tested. information, translating it into the application interface, which is displayed to the user on his or her screen. It also takes actions ICA® Defined performed by the user and send it back to the Metaframe server for processing. The ICA is an acronym for Citrix’s Independent interface is presented to the user while Computing Architecture, a three-part 100% of the processing takes place on the application server technology that separates server. an application’s logic from its user interface and allows 100% application execution on Publishing Applications the server. This is a method of application deployment, Moreover, ICA is becoming a standard in the where the user does not get a replacement thin client industry. "Over 130 companies for his or her current desktop. Instead, the have licensed ICA and are using it to user receives only the application in a deliver a broad suite of application window on the desktop itself either via an services to more than 200 different ICA client or within a web browser. types of client devices, and this is a testament to the on-going acceptance Publishing applications play a main role in of our enabling technology. With 24 load balancing and web-enabling million users, ICA has surpassed the user applications. These applications are located count of the most popular online by clients through the ICA Master Browser. information services, reinforcing Citrix's It should be noted that this is different from a leadership position in application server Windows NT Master Browser and is 3 markets" . independent of that service. However, it is similar in that it does not work across routers This opens a completely new application unless an ICA gateway is installed on one of scenario enabling not only Windows the Metaframe servers located on one side based clients to access services on of the router. The ICA Master Browser is Metaframe servers but also other then responsible for determining which devices not originally intended for server will serve up the application to the accessing FRC applications such as ICA client. mobile devices, handheld devices and television sets. Web-enabling Applications

Three components make up the ICA Citrix Metaframe provides administrators environment: with the ability to make applications available to users with a web browser. Metaframe Server – All information received Metaframe web computing is made up of or sent by the Metaframe server uses the four components:

3 Iacobucci, Edward, President & CEO Citrix Systems, April 2000 ©2000 - Michael G. Silva Von-der-Tann-Str. 21! D-69126 Heidelberg ! Germany Tel. +49 (6221) 316745 ! Fax: +49 (6221) 316746 ! Email: [email protected] Maximising your CFO Vision™ IT Infrastructure: Citrix Metaframe™ in a Geographically Dispersed Organization

The Metaframe Server – One or more or her own configuration files. In a Citrix Metaframe servers publish the application Metaframe environment, all users share the that will be accessed via the web browser. same image of the application and The Metaframe server views connections theoretically, they should have a common from web clients no differently than those configuration file. The whole idea of which connect via the Citrix ICA client and reduced TCO requires that it become easier no special configuration is required. to maintain. CFO Vision’s present method of However, if users are located on the Internet application configuration does not provide then special permissions should be this natively. incorporated to prevent authorized access. However, the flexibility of the SAS System The Web Server – The web server software allows a CFO Vision consultant to overcome can run on either the Metaframe server or a this limitation by dynamically building a separate server such as used for a configuration for each user. The corporate Intranet. This author believes autoexec.sas file in CFO Vision contains that administrators should limit the load on client specific configuration parameters. For the Metaframe server and use a separate example, each CFO Vision client must have server for web services. In some cases, a local storage area separate from other administrators have to register the ICA file clients for storing individual templates and type as a MIME type so that the application data called a local finroot. In order to ensure can be launched. In some rare cases, web that each client has its own local finroot, servers prevent Java from running on a the following lines must be added to the separate machine. autoexec.sas:

The Web Page – The web page contains all %Let finroot = of the necessary information to launch the %SYSGET(HOMEDIR)\LOC_FROOT; application. It consists of two components: the HTML file containing the required tags Where HOMEDIR is the Windows NT and the associated ICA file containing the environment variable specifying where a connection information. Citrix provides an user has his or her private directory on the ALE wizard for automating this process or it NT network and LOC_FROOT can be any can be created manually using HTML directory name to be created in the editors and the ICA client for creating the HOMEDIR location. The SYSGET macro is ICA file. a standard SAS System macro variable to returning operating system environment The ICA Web client – There are a number of variables. clients called ICA Web clients. There is a general Windows web client which works In addition, changes to the config.sas can with any Windows based web browser that help optimize CFO Vision over slow network supports MIME. Citrix also provides an connections. Unfortunately, CFO Vision has ActiveX control for Internet Explorer and a embedded bit maps files (.bmp), which are Netscape Navigator Plug-in. There is also a very inefficient over slow connections. The Java web client that will work with any web main splash screen can be disabled but any browser that supports Java Virtual Machine imbedded bit maps are hard coded into the (JVM) 1.1 or higher. product. The following changes should be made to the config.sas: CFO Vision Considerations /* location of the CFO Vision There are several configuration changes, Splash Screen which must be considered when */ implementing CFO Vision in a Citrix /* -splashloc !sasroot\p1win.bmp Metaframe environment. Firstly, CFO Vision */ was designed that each user would have a copy of the client software on his or her -nosplash desktop and each client would also have his

-nosplash is a standard config.sas Figure 2 EVAS parameter for disabling the splash screen in SAS 6.12.

Experiments with changing the p1win.bmp file in the CFO Vision application directory did not work because the name is hard coded into the application as well as the bit map itself.

Quaker Chemical – A case study

Quaker Chemicals may be what some call the “Old Economy”. However, it is actually the New Old Economy. The Old Economy implies traditional organizations based on The next step in the project was to provide manufacturing and other technologies, access to users located outside of the which although advanced are not solely primary headquarters in Conshohocken based on Information Technology or the Pennsylvania USA. Quaker Chemicals has New Economy. Why is it then the New Old a geographically dispersed environment with Economy? It is called this because it is a subsidiaries in every part of the world. profit-based business dependent on core Some of it’s larger offices are connected via values that have made a company a Frame Relay network to the US but some successful for many years unlike the New other offices located in the Indian Economy companies, which rarely show any Subcontinent and South America are profit. Moreover, these New Old Economy connected via a Virtual Private Network from companies use Information Technology to AT&T. Therefore, the connection speed enhance business practices and varies from 28.8 Kilobytes per second to 2 relationships with shareholders, customers Megabytes per second (shared) for frame and employees. Therefore, Quaker relay. Chemicals is a New Old Economy organization as the use of Information Unfortunately, client/server applications Technology is seen as a major such as CFO Vision are not accommodating enhancement to continued profits and of slow telecommunication lines. This is true shareholder value. for all FRC applications. The only solution is to use an client independent architecture This author made a proposal to Bubba Tyler, such as the one found with Citrix Metaframe. CIO of Quaker Chemicals called EVAS or It should be noted that the backend server Enterprise-wide Virtual Application Suite. components must be Windows NT for CFO EVAS uses the techniques outlined earlier in Vision as the client application is Windows this paper to create a server farm for the only. However, the CFO Vision server can application delivery of business intelligence be a Unix server. packages such as CFO Vision, CFO Vision for Budgeting and Corporate Information To achieve the goal of a centralilzed FRC Partners ODD Loader package. system in a geographically dispersed environment, one must also consider the EVAS is scalable solution which allows end-user and their requirements. Often, Quaker Chemical to achieve a lower cost of FRC applications are used a few day a ownership for CFO Vision as well as month and then forgotten until the next improved support and availability for the month. Therefore, it should be as easy to users of the system. use as possible with a place where instructions and news can be placed before The following diagram depicts the EVAS the user runs the application. The best model. approach to achieve this goal is to use Citrix Metaframe application web-enablement and

Below is a screen shot of the main Financial However, the industry is moving towards Applications page one the QuakerOne leasing out applications that are physically Information Portal. stored and managed by third parties. The question is, will SAS Institute accommodate this trend?

Conclusions

FRC vendors need to address the total cost of ownership of these applications in a geographically dispersed environment. Although some have come up with clever method of replicating data across slow networks, many organizations want a centralized method of collecting, cleaning, consolidating and reporting on enterprise financial data. Citrix Metaframe offers and excellent way to provide this functionality A Swiss Manufacturing Company – A independent of the FRC package in use. case study This is a critical choice to make as not all FRC packages are created equal. Who It should also be noted that even companies would want an FRC application that is web- who have geographically dispersed entities enabled but only has four dimensions? are also driven to this model for other cost saving reasons. In the example of a Swiss manufacturing company, not only were they motivated by the benefits of bringing together international subsidiaries, they also saw cost savings by outsourcing the entire FRC infrastructure.

They were able to obtain this by enlisting the help of an Application Service Provider in Switzerland. This ASP offered to host the hardware necessary for an FRC infrastructure. This included a CFO Vision server and a Citrix Metaframe server. Moreover, the ASP provided VPN service to their client allowing them to utilize their existing Internet connection thus further reducing both hard and soft costs.

The ASP Model – a viable alternative?

Now the thorny issue of licensing pops up. SAS Institute does not have an ASP model in their licensing contracts. It is an individual horse trade with the local European offices to get this sort of pricing. In the example of the Swiss company above, the server is used exclusively by the ASP’s client and no other. Therefore, there is no technical