VMware ThinApp and application virtualization are ushering in a new era for Systems Administrators.  Growing in popularity and performance there are numerous benefits to application virtualization.  ThinApp itself is lightweight (Only 400k and 2MB RAM for the VOS) and outperforms the competitors (by a longshot) when recently studied by Competitve Systems Analysis <a href="http://www.xpnet.com/appvirt2008.pdf">http://www.xpnet.com/appvirt2008.pdf</a>.  By utilizing Citrix Servers and deploying ThinApp packages, you can create the ultimate application delivery machine(s).<!--more-->

First,  a little about VMware ThinApp and what makes it such a great application virtualization tool. 
<ul>
	<li>As previously stated, the VMware ThinApp VOS (Virtual Operating System) only consumes about 400k in disk space and 2MB of memory per application instance.  This makes running Thin applications no more painless than native ones.</li>
	<li>VMware ThinApp application packages can be unlimited size.  A 2TB application packages loads and begins streaming in seconds based on the users commands.  There isn't a long period to load the entire app.</li>
	<li>VMware ThinApp applications are run in independant environments from other applications on the desktop.  (Developer's like me rejoice) No longer are the days (pre GAC) where one application upgrade or installation would upgrade your required DLL with a incompatible version.  Run as many .Net versions as you like and each of them run in their own VOS.  Less clutter has to mean smoother performance and lower error rates as well.</li>
	<li>VMware ThinApp is agent-less.  This means that they run on PC's out of the box.  No agents or software to load on the client.</li>
</ul>
Now that the ThinApp "lovefest" is out of the way we can talk about creating the ultimate application delivery machine.  By combining VMware ThinApp and Citrix we can stop configuring applications on the Citrix server directly.  This will save time in installing an applications on the Citrix server and upgrade costs (version confilct, DLL mismatch mentioned above, downtime) all while providing a more stable and reliable environment.  Instead,  all we have to do is publish the ThinApp application packages to the Citrix Server.  Since all the applications are packaged with their own custom tailored configurations they will run as they were meant to perform with out all the extra overhead all while reducing the overall load on the Citrix server which leads to overall better system performance.