Following on Calvin Hsu’s recent blog post “Project Chrysalis: Transforming Business for Application ISVs,” today, we are going to dive into the mechanics of how Citrix Cloud can help an application ISV address the unique opportunity to deliver their customers a SaaS-like experience. If you haven’t read Calvin’s post yet, we encourage you to do so.

Secure delivery of the ISV application via the cloud

The framework of this cloud-based ISV app delivery platform contains three major extendable service layers. It starts with the Secure Access and Control Layer, followed by Resource Provisioning, Deployment Automation and Power & Capacity Management layer, backed by a comprehensive Monitoring and Analytic Reporting Layer to complete the solution. Combined, the three layers provide a powerful foundational tool set that allows ISVs to accelerate their vision to the cloud-based service transformation.

Based on the three-layer foundation, ISVs can deliver their applications via two market routes: ISV-hosted application delivery services, and an ISV standardized deployment model in the customer’s cloud.

Route 1: ISV Hosted Application Delivery Services

An ISV can directly deliver Windows software packages hosted with the cloud infrastructure provider of their choice. With Citrix Cloud APIs, the ISVs can monitor and quickly scale out the delivery infrastructure and keep track of user activities while maintaining visibility and control. By leveraging Citrix Receiver to deliver a native Windows application user experience to Mac OS, IOS, Android, Chrome OS and Linux end points, ISVs can provide fast and fully turnkey application delivery services to their consumers while increasing service value to the existing software packages.

Route 2: ISV Standardized Deployment Model in customer’s cloud.

In some ISV application packages, ISVs may not be able to provide a centralized hosted solution to their customers due to the application design and security requirements. ISVs can leverage Citrix Cloud services to package the applications in Citrix App Layering images or ISV-configured template images. This allows customers to import the images to their own cloud infrastructure subscription and to connect to their customers own private database or storage.

If you are an ISV looking to extend your product services value and to provide turnkey services solutions or simply looking for ways to speed up your application deployment cycle in your customer environment, please contact my colleague, samantha.foster@citrix.com to start your cloud transformation.