Last week Citrix almost silently released its much awaited orchestration framework: Workflow Studio.
The first news about the product emerged almost one year ago, but the company didn’t provide access to the bits before June 2008.
Workflow Studio is key piece in the Citrix virtual infrastructure vision as it delivers the mandatory automation layer that makes smart any cloud computing or dynamic data center environment.
This market segment is pretty empty: one of the few serious competitors was Dunes Technologies, which was acquired by VMware in September 2008 and that is about to relaunch as vCenter Orchestrator.
At its first version the product, built on Microsoft PowerShell, is able to automate a number of tasks in XenServer/XenCenter, XenDesktop, XenApp and NetScaler, through an intuitive GUI.
As some of these products supports 3rd party solutions (for example XenDesktop supports VMware ESX), Workflow Studio can automate some of their capabilities as well.
Additionally, any Citrix partner can further extend the platform providing its own automation script (as Workflow Templates and Tasks Libraries).
The product is available for any Citrix customer that has a Subscription Advantage.