SAN FRANCISCO - Today at Citrix Synergy 2010, the conference where virtualization, networking and cloud computing meet, Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) announced seven new turnkey solutions that make it easy for cloud providers to deliver practical business services to enterprise customers.  The new solutions leverage core Citrix virtualization and networking technologies that are used daily to power the world’s largest and most demanding cloud and internet sites.  Unlike proprietary solutions from other virtualization vendors, however, the new Citrix Cloud Solution portfolio is based on an open framework that allows cloud providers to add their own innovation to each solution, creating unique, differentiated services that address real business needs.

Not Just a Carbon Copy of Your Datacenter

“Some vendors would have you believe that the cloud is merely a carbon copy of your enterprise datacenter that should be offloaded to someone else,” said Klaus Oestermann, Group VP and GM, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix. “Citrix believes in a far more open world where customers can choose from a wide variety of innovative cloud services designed to enhance and extend their own internal IT capacity. These cloud services should work with whatever enterprise customers currently have - not because they are all built on the same locked-down, cookie-cutter virtualization platform, but because they are designed around an open framework that encourages both innovation and interoperability.”

Key Solution Highlights

The new Citrix Cloud Solutions are based on an open technology stack with deep interoperability between layers, enabling enterprises to leverage existing investments, including third-party virtualization technologies and tools.  Unique integration of Citrix platform virtualization, edge networking, and desktop delivery services are augmented with targeted capabilities aligned to specific workloads, such as application lifecycle management, migration and regulatory compliance.

By targeting the practical business-oriented scenarios that make the most sense for customers to purchase as a cloud service, Citrix is focusing its strategy on a more pragmatic approach to cloud computing that meets the real-world needs of customers today.  Customer choice is built into each solution as a key tenet with technologies designed to transcend traditional datacenter and networking boundaries, providing unfettered mobility of application workloads among multiple cloud providers without requiring forklift upgrades of existing infrastructure.  In addition, customers can be confident with the assurance that the solutions have been verified via the Citrix Ready program.  The initial Citrix Cloud Solutions include:

• On-Boarding - Enables seamless migration of existing applications and workloads into cloud infrastructures, including secure access, optimized network delivery, virtual machine migration and full support for the open virtualization format (OVF).  Services based on this solution can dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of datacenter-to-cloud migration.
• Development and Test - Incorporates on-demand application lifecycle management to help organizations cut both the time and budget required to set-up and allocate new infrastructure for test and development workloads in the cloud.
• Disaster Recovery - Helps customers prevent unexpected interruptions to applications and data by leveraging virtualization, storage, data replication and orchestration services to support cloud-based delivery of disaster recovery services.  Cloud providers delivering services based on this solution can offer customers a compelling alternative to dedicated ‘hot-site’ standby facilities.
• Compliance - Helps customers in regulated industries meet strict compliance requirements, while providing unparalleled control over sensitive data stored in both enterprise datacenters and public clouds.  This approach reduces compliance costs, allowing customers to focus on their core competencies, while bringing proven expertise to industry-specific compliance mandates.
• On-Demand Applications - Transforms traditional Windows enterprise applications into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that can be delivered over the web as an on-demand service to users anywhere, on any device.
• On-Demand Desktops - Enables enterprise customers to deliver complete Windows virtual desktops from the cloud, combining the cost and manageability benefits of desktop virtualization with cloud elasticity and capacity-on-demand.
• On-Demand Demos - Lets software companies make their product demos available to customers and prospects over the web with no setup, downloads or configuration required.

Availability

Starting today and continuing throughout 2010, Citrix Cloud Solutions will be available from leading cloud service providers.  

Please see separate announcements today from the following providers announcing further details of their solutions:

• SoftLayer (On-boarding and On-Demand Demos)
• Carpathia (Development and Test)
• Terremark (Compliance)

Quotes

Frank Gens, SVP and Chief Analyst, IDC
“Citrix is effectively addressing both cloud service providers and the enterprise with its new cloud solution strategy.  The pragmatic, workload-focused approach will be appealing to the CIOs, while the ability to leverage technology stacks, programs and templates and turn them into cloud services for enterprise customers is a much-needed solution for cloud service providers.  Citrix shows promise to be a leading force in bringing cloud to the enterprise.”

Antonio Piraino, Vice President of Research, Tier1 Research
“The real opportunity in the cloud resides within the enterprise sector - an area that top managed hosting providers are beginning to target.  In order to penetrate that end of the market, the next generation of cloud enablement technologies will need to focus on individual workloads and verticals that demand unique requirements from their cloud environment.  Equally important becomes the ability to maintain the availability, lifecycle and portability of those workloads while retaining the integrity of the experience and security to assigned users.”

Peter Weber, CEO, Carpathia
“Application development and test is a key workload for our enterprise and government customers.  Carpathia InstantOn Virtual Lab Solutions - based upon the Citrix Cloud Solution for Development and Test - adds critical application lifecycle management services to the Carpathia InstantOn cloud, making it easy for our customers to tap cloud capacity for their dev and test workloads.”

Phil Grove, Global Director of End User Services, CSC
“CSC Dynamic Desktop, powered by Citrix XenDesktop, takes advantage of Citrix Cloud Services for On-Demand Desktops delivering our clients’ agility, security and cost benefits in private clouds.  Using CSC’s case driven consultative deployment approach and leveraging our strategic partnership with Citrix enables us to provide our clients enterprise desktop as a service - an innovative, high quality, leadership service.”

Robert Bye, Vice President and General Manager, nGenX
“Application management is becoming increasingly complex and costly for organizations, and the growing demand for more mobile and flexible work environments adds to these challenges.  The Citrix Cloud Solution for On-Demand Applications makes it easy for us to transform any Windows application into a cloud service and deliver it on demand.  As a result, we have been able to lower our customers’ IT costs, provide a better user experience and enable greater productivity, while improving data security.”

Lance Crosby, CEO, SoftLayer
“The Virtual Demo Center, running on SoftLayer CloudLayer, shows the value the cloud can bring to independent software vendors.  Using the Citrix Cloud Solution for On-Demand Demos, SoftLayer can enable ISVs to stand-up fully isolated PoC environments on-demand without having to burden the sales force, channel or customers with concerns over provisioning and configuring the PoC hardware and software capacity. And to make migrating application workloads to our CloudLayer platform as seamless as possible, SoftLayer will also work with Citrix to provide a turnkey Onboarding solution.”

Marvin Wheeler, Chief Strategy Officer, Terremark
“Maintaining the physical, technical and process controls, as well as the reporting necessary, to meet today’s industry and government compliance mandates is one of the most expensive tasks our enterprise and federal customers face.  At Terremark, we are widely recognized for the highly compliant nature of our cloud computing solutions. By incorporating Citrix NetScaler VPX, a key enabling technology within the Citrix Cloud Solution for Compliance, Terremark can provide our cloud computing customers even greater levels of compliance at a lower cost.”

Related Links and Announcements

• Video:  Citrix Cloud Solutions overview
  Cloud Blog Series:
  
•  May 1 - A Synergy Theme - Toward the Enterprise Ready Cloud, by Simon Crosby, CTO, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix
•  May 4 - Knowing What You Don't Know, by Sunil Potti, VP of product management and product marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
•  May 5 - To Be or Not to Be Cloud, by Roger Klorese, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
•  May 6 - Countering the Race-To-The-Bottom, by Sunil Potti, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
•  May 11 - Pushing Apps Uphill, by Pete Downing, Principal Product Manager, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
•  May 12 - Citrix Synergy - The Forecast is Cloudy, by Roger Klorese, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix
• May 13 - Introducing Citrix Cloud Solutions. Charting a Pragmatic Path Forward, by Sunil Potti, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing, Networking and Cloud Product Group, Citrix

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