Citrix Cloud Center (C3) is an integrated portfolio of Citrix delivery infrastructure products packaged and marketed to the cloud service provider market. C3 integrates cloud proven virtualization and networking products that power many of today’s largest Internet and Web service providers. This unique combination lets next-generation cloud providers take advantage of the most widely-adopted virtual infrastructure platform for hosted cloud services, as well as the most proven infrastructure to deliver those services reliably and securely to both cloud consumers and enterprise datacenters. Citrix C3 is available to Service Providers on a monthly, usage-based pricing and support mode via the
Citrix Service Provider Program.

The cloud computing era
Just as distributing computing evolved from the mainframe era, cloud computing is the next major wave that will supplement today’s computing model.  C3 brings together the service delivery infrastructure building blocks that have been proven in the world’s largest clouds and enterprise datacenters, enabling massively scalable architectures that support rapid innovation and cost reduction.

Citrix Cloud Center
C3 is designed to give cloud providers a complete set of service delivery infrastructure building blocks for hosting, managing and delivering cloud-based computing services. C3 includes a reference architecture that combines the individual capabilities of several Citrix product lines to offer a powerful, dynamic, secure and highly available service-based infrastructure ideally suited to large-scale, on-demand delivery of both IT infrastructure and application services. This architecture consists of five key components:

• Platform – Powered by Citrix XenServer™, the only enterprise-class, cloud-proven virtualization platform that delivers the critical features of live migration and centralized multi-server management at no cost.  XenServer combines the cloud-proven scalability of the Xen® hypervisor which powers most of the world’s largest clouds and a cloud-scale distributed virtual switch for secure multi-tenant environments , with all the virtualization management and dynamic workload provisioning capabilities of the full Citrix XenServer product line, enabling cloud providers to host and manage any combination of Windows® and Linux environments.

• Applications and Desktop Services - Powered by Citrix XenApp™ and Citrix XenDesktop™, service providers can take their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings to a new level. Citrix XenApp™ is a Windows® application delivery system that manages applications in the datacenter and delivers them as an on-demand service to users anywhere using any device. With Citrix XenApp, service providers can now effectively deliver any Microsoft Windows applications in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Citrix XenDesktop is a desktop virtualization or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution that delivers desktops as a service to users anywhere by centralizing desktop lifecycle management.  With Citrix XenDesktop service providers can deliver Windows Desktops as a Service (DaaS).

• Delivery – Powered by Citrix® NetScaler®:  Through its rich policy-based AppExpert engine, Citrix NetScaler delivers cloud-based resources to users over the Web, continually optimizing user application performance and security by dynamically scaling the number of virtual machines (VMs) or servers available in response to changing workload demands and infrastructure availability. This allows cloud providers to balance workloads across large distributed cloud environments and transparently redirect traffic to alternate capacity on or off premise in the event of network failures or datacenter outages.  NetScaler can also dramatically reduce server requirements in large cloud centers by offloading protocol and transaction processing from backend server pools. NetScaler delivers Web services to an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day.
   

  A virtual appliance version of Citrix NetScaler, the Citrix NetScaler VPX enables service providers to run multiple NetScaler instances simultaneously, providing true, cost-effective multi-tenancy web application delivery. In addition, service providers will be able to ensure the best application performance and most reliable service delivery by “cloud balancing,” which allows load balancing across multiple cloud infrastructures.

• Bridge – Powered by Citrix Repeater:  As larger enterprises begin experimenting with cloud-based services for parts of their own infrastructure and application hosting strategy, cloud providers will also need reliable and secure ways to provide a seamless bridge between hosted cloud services and premise-based enterprise services. Over time, C3 will incorporate a set of open interfaces that allow customers to easily move virtual machines and application resources into a cloud-based datacenter and back again as needed. Repeater technology will play a critical role in this enterprise bridge by accelerating and optimizing application traffic between the cloud and the enterprise datacenter, even over long distances.

• Orchestration – Powered by Citrix Workflow Studio™: Tying it all together, Citrix Workflow Studio provides a powerful orchestration and workflow capability that allows the products in the C3 portfolio to be dynamically controlled and automated, and integrated with customer business and IT policy. Workflow Studio allows customers to control their infrastructure dynamically-–integrating previously disconnected processes and products into a single powerful, orchestrated and cohesive system. This unique capability will make it easier for cloud providers to enable highly efficient burstable clouds that automatically scale resources up and down based on demand, shifting hardware resources to where they are most needed and powering them down for maximum power savings when not needed.

Citrix C3 Reference Architecture