This is a busy period for virtualization and cloud computing. The OpenStack summit started on October 15 in San Diego California, VMworld Europe just finished a few days ago and another event already started in Barcelona today, October 17, Citrix Synergy.
Citrix started the sessions with a couple of important announcements, the expanded partnership with Cisco into three strategic areas of cloud networking, cloud orchestration, and mobile workstyles. Besides Citrix also announced an extension of its collaboration with NetApp to deliver an integrated cloud orchestration and storage solution.
Focal points of the partnership between Cisco and Citrix:
- Cloud Networking: Cisco and Citrix intend to jointly integrate the Citrix NetScaler application delivery controller (ADC) to seamlessly coexist with other Cisco network and security services, such as Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). The companies also intend to integrate Cisco Nexus 1000V with Citrix XenServer® to enable enterprise and service provider customers to build clouds based in part on key open source technology.
- Cloud Orchestration: Cisco and Citrix intend to develop an integrated cloud solution for enterprise and service provider deployments based on the companies’ best-in-class portfolios. This will include the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco Nexus Series switching, and Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE) components, as well as Citrix’s leading cloud orchestration solution — Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack.
- Mobile Workstyles: Cisco and Citrix intend to develop “mobile workstyle and BYOD” solutions that give mobile users a unified way to securely access business apps, data, voice and collaboration services from any device, anywhere.
- Partnership Momentum: Since the start of their partnership, Cisco and Citrix have more than doubled business together by deploying tens of thousands of new virtual desktops to small and large customers across the globe through the successful implementation of Cisco’s Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) smart solution with Citrix XenDesktop.
Citrix Senior Vice President of Strategy, Wes Wasson, said:
Citrix and Cisco share a common vision of computing in the mobile and cloud era, and have a strong shared culture focused on openness, user experience and a relentless commitment to customer success. Extending our successful partnership to new areas like cloud, mobility and networking will allow us to bring some amazing new innovations to our joint customers in both the enterprise and service provider markets.
On the other side, the partnership between Citrix and Netapp will focus on:
- NetApp OnCommand® Unified Manager.
- NetApp virtual storage console (VSC) for Citrix XenServer®.
The Citrix Cloud Platform powered by Apache CloudStack provides our mutual enterprise customers worldwide with a simple, easy-to-deploy architecture for transitioning from current IT infrastructure silos to private and hybrid clouds. The platform continues to gain momentum, and NetApp looks forward to working with Citrix on integration work that helps accelerate the transition to a shared, agile data infrastructure.