One year ago at Citrix Synergy, Citrix and Microsoft kicked off a powerful expansion of our partnership to help our customers securely embrace the cloud and mobility, extending and deepening our long-time partnership which spans 25 years. We announced Azure as our preferred cloud. Our vision energized our customers, and generated praise from industry analysts and press.

Over the past year, we’ve consistently executed on our plan, introducing compelling services that are now available in the Azure marketplace. We’ve also announced new security and mobility innovations to help businesses make it easier for their people to work, securely and productively.

More importantly, our customers love these purpose-built Citrix Cloud Services on Azure, based on how quickly they are adopting them. In fact, we’ve seen more than 500 deployments from the Azure Marketplace in just the first two months.

Today, the following services — launched in the past year — are available:

  • XenApp Essentials: the easiest and fastest way to securely deliver Windows apps from Microsoft Azure to any device, available through the Azure Marketplace. Optimized for Azure, XenApp Essentials delivers a simplified management experience with security configurations, management, and user experience features.
  • XenDesktop Essentials: the first service for deploying Windows 10 in the cloud. An industry first, XenDesktop Essentials enables customers who have purchased Windows Software Assurance on a per-user basis the option to host their Windows 10 Enterprise Current Branch for Business images on Azure.
  • NetScaler Unified Gateway integration with Microsoft Intune: This solution enables IT admins to check for compliance and the state of the end user device, so they can provide policy based access control and virtual private network (VPN) capabilities to on-premises applications. The new solution with Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway provides greater security and flexibility for customers who need new ways to manage mobile access to sensitive data and apps, while giving administrators greater endpoint management and control.
  • NetScaler VPX Global Server Load Balancing now available on Azure: This will allow managers to enable active failover or load sharing across multiple Azure regions, and even to on-premises data centers, particularly critical as enterprises begin capitalizing on a hybrid cloud strategy to account for unplanned outages. In addition, NetScaler VPX capacity was increased to 3Gbps, while adding support for multiple IP addresses on either single or multiple network interface controllers; increasing instance scalability to support broader workloads in the cloud.
  • NetScaler SD-WAN on Azure: This new offering enables enterprises automatically build secure and always-on connections from any branch or data center, and take advantage of the NetScaler SD-WAN ability to identify and optimize cloud traffic.

In addition, we continue to see tremendous adoption of our co-developed solution for delivering Skype for Business in virtualized environments through XenApp and XenDesktop. When Microsoft released Windows Server 2016, Citrix provided day one support for XenApp and XenDesktop to run on Windows Server 2016, so customers can benefit from security integrations, like Device Guard and Credential Guard with Hyper-V. And we continue to help Microsoft and Citrix customers manage their migrations to Windows 10, including the latest edition, Windows 10 S. Designating Azure as the preferred cloud for Citrix also means that ShareFile enterprise customers will default to Azure moving forward

Integration work is currently underway to enable customers to combine the advantages of Citrix XenMobile and use Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Soon, customers will be able to use Microsoft EMS to manage Citrix Secure mobile apps. Work is also underway to embed NetScaler VPNs in Microsoft EMS Mobile Application Management offerings, and Citrix will be building an enterprise mobility management service for customers on Azure.

Our engineers are hard at work on a new wave of innovations that will help our customers move faster, even as they enhance their security. Our collaboration continues to gain momentum.

So, what’s next for Citrix and Microsoft? We are excited to preview Citrix Secure Browser Essentials built on Azure. Coming in late 2017, Citrix Secure Browser Essentials is a simple cloud based offering for secure remote access to the internet that isolates end user internet browsing from enterprise endpoints and networks.

So, stay tuned. There is a lot more to come this year.

The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.

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