Citrix Unveils End-to-End Cloud Networking Lineup

SAN FRANCISCO--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Today at Citrix Synergy™, where virtual computing takes center stage, Citrix Systems announced two powerful new cloud networking products designed to seamlessly connect enterprises to external clouds. The first is NetScaler® Cloud Gateway, which sits at the “front door” of corporate datacenters giving IT an easy, unified way to orchestrate the delivery of any mix of SaaS, web and Windows apps to end users. The second is NetScaler® Cloud Bridge, which sits at the “back door” of corporate datacenters, giving IT unlimited capacity by seamlessly and securely extending any datacenter to any external cloud service. Both products are built on a common service delivery fabric provided by the recently announced NetScaler® SDX™ platform (see diagram).

“OpenStack Gains Enterprise Backing: A Peek at Project Olympus”

As the industry shifts from the “PC Era” to the “Cloud Era”, the role of IT is rapidly outgrowing its ability to own and manage all its own apps, infrastructure and devices. Consumerization is driving IT to deliver a mix of applications to a variety of user-owned devices. At the same time, IT is under growing pressure to take advantage of increasingly ubiquitous and low-cost cloud computing capacity from external cloud and hosting providers. Until now, however, those goals have been difficult to achieve without compromising security, manageability and performance. The introduction of Cloud Gateway and Cloud Bridge instantly make the cloud more accessible by giving IT organizations an easy way to extend their datacenters and private clouds to a vast array of external cloud services with no compromise.

What’s New

NetScaler Cloud Gateway

New product that sits at the “front door” of corporate datacenters to orchestrate the delivery of SaaS, web and Windows applications from a single location.
Gives IT a single point of control for managing all of their SaaS apps, providing secure access, single sign-on, user provisioning and de-provisioning, unified licensing distribution and allocation, and service-level monitoring on the uptime and response time of SaaS apps.
Seamlessly weaves in the management and security of existing enterprise Windows and web applications so the delivery of all apps can be orchestrated from one place.
Supports all leading browsers and all versions of Citrix Receiver™, a universal software client that gives end users easy self-service access to all their apps in one location, from any PC, Mac, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

NetScaler Cloud Bridge

New product that sits at the “back door” of corporate datacenters, connecting them securely and transparently to compute capacity from any external cloud or hosting environment.
Transparently bridges the enterprise’s network with the cloud provider’s network, making it easy to shift parts of an application to the cloud without having to change the app or network.
Encrypts the connection between the enterprise premise and the cloud provider.
Optimizes bandwidth and performance of data moved between the enterprise and the cloud.
Allows customers to move app compute to the cloud, while keeping sensitive data and directory information securely inside the corporate datacenter.

The new Cloud Gateway and Cloud Bridge products are offered in flexible physical and virtual appliances, making them easy to deploy into almost any environment.

Why it matters

Cloud Bridge and Cloud Gateway are part of a growing portfolio of products from Citrix that make cloud computing easy, secure and accessible. Together with the rest of the NetScaler product line, these new products form a “service delivery fabric” that makes it easy for enterprises and cloud providers alike to manage the rapidly growing range of new services travelling over the network, including desktops, data, cloud apps, voice, video and rich media services. The new Citrix cloud networking products ensure cloud applications and services are delivered with the best performance, security and reliability, regardless of whether they are running in the local enterprise datacenter, or in an external cloud datacenter.

Quotes

Paul Rad, Vice President of Technology, Rackspace Hosting

“OpenStack changes the IT equation. Now CIOs can run a highly standardized and scalable cloud operating system in the datacenters that Rackspace is deploying globally. NetScaler Cloud Bridge brings together external and internal cloud infrastructures and opens the door for IT executives to choose the right computing infrastructure that makes sense for a particular workload based on the business needs.”

Antonio Piraino, Vice President and Research Director, Tier 1 Research

“The service provider and enterprise sectors are moving toward the adoption of cloud computing to make everyday business tasks easier to distribute and consume, however, there continues to be a nagging hesitancy to do so as a result of compliance, security and inconsistency concerns. A solution that offers an end-to-end solution that gives users easy access to the applications and data they desire, while also giving IT the control and assurances they demand from their systems, irrespective of where they reside, is really what business consumers are asking for today.”

Klaus Oestermann, Group Vice President and General Manager, Networking and Cloud Product Group

“Citrix is unique in its ability to offer a complete cloud networking solution that is well suited for both providers and enterprise customers. With NetScaler Cloud Gateway we have the front end solution that simplifies the management of SaaS, web and Windows apps and gives today’s BYO generation the easy access to all applications they need from any device. And with NetScaler Cloud Bridge, we allow IT to keep the control and security they want, while leveraging compute and infrastructure services from external cloud providers.”

Pricing and availability

For NetScaler Cloud Gateway pricing and availability, please see Cloud Gateway announcement for more details.

NetScaler Cloud Bridge will be available in the second half of 2011, with pricing starting at $5,000. See Cloud Bridge announcement for more details.

NetScaler SDX is currently available across a range of platforms offering performance up to 50Gbps.

Related Links

NetSuite partner blog: “The March of Cloud ERP into the Enterprise” by Paul Turner, Senior Director Product Marketing, NetSuite
Rackspace partner blog: “OpenStack Gains Enterprise Backing: A Peek at Project Olympus” by Mark Collier, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Rackspace

Softlayer partner blog: “Tools and Bridges” by Nathan Day, Chief Technology Officer, SoftLayer
Carpathia partner blog: “Cloud Networking Comes of Age” by Jon Greaves, Chief Technology Officer, Carpathia

Citrix Expert Blog: “Break Down Walls, Build Doors… End the ‘IT Cold War’" by Sunil Potti, Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
Announcement: Citrix Announces NetScaler Cloud Gateway
Announcement: Citrix Announces NetScaler Cloud Bridge
Announcement: Citrix Announces GoToManage Monitoring for XenServer

Recent announcement: Citrix Teams with SolarWinds, Splunk and CA Technologies to Deliver App Visibility for Public and Private Clouds
Recent announcement: New Citrix NetScaler SDX Brings Service Delivery Networking to the Cloud Era
Recent announcement: New Citrix NetScaler DataStream Technology Addresses Explosive Growth in Cloud, Mobile and Corporate Data

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Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leading provider of virtual computing solutions that help people work and play from anywhere on any device. More than 230,000 enterprises rely on Citrix to create better ways for people, IT and business to work through virtual meetings, desktops and datacenters. Citrix virtualization, networking and cloud solutions deliver over 100 million corporate desktops and touch 75 percent of Internet users each day. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies in 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2010 was $1.87 billion.

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