A hybrid cloud strategy has many benefits: redundancy, enhanced scalability and performance, and faster growth. But if you don’t consider all aspects of your migration when implementing a hybrid cloud strategy for your business — including impacts to traffic patterns — you could create unforeseen hurdles.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen an evolution in how people work and witnessed firsthand the problems with traditional hub-and-spoke architectures — primarily poor application performance and inconsistent security stemming from an increased number of remote users and cloud adoption.
To achieve low-latency network connectivity and ensure successful cloud migrations, IT must leverage local internet breakouts with redundant links. With a multi-layered security approach that integrates with the network, you can reduce risk and complexity.
Citrix offers your business a true hybrid cloud strategy for your hybrid workforce. Citrix SD-WAN optimizes network performance and provides hybrid cloud simplicity by ensuring consistent WAN orchestration across all major clouds. It can also help you speed up site rollouts while lowering data transport costs. With our latest enhancements, you can seamlessly extend your on-prem workloads to Google Cloud.
The Citrix SD-WAN instance on Google Cloud supports high availability (HA), high throughput, and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) licensing. It optimizes access to all workloads on Google Cloud, both from branch locations and from home offices. With this integration, businesses can also leverage Google’s powerful backbone network to inter-connect different regions or access remote workloads. And, with Citrix as your trusted vendor for virtualizing apps and desktops, you can achieve enhanced resiliency, faster performance, and increased flexibility as you migrate these workloads to Google Cloud.
A Powerful Combination
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architectures were designed to enable fast, reliable, and secure access to SaaS apps in this cloud-and-mobile-first era. Citrix offers integrated networking and cloud-delivered security solutions that help you achieve a SASE architecture faster. By unifying our comprehensive cloud-delivered security stack comprised of Secure Internet Access services (Secure Web Gateway, Cloud Access Security Broker, Malware Intelligence and Sandboxing) and Secure Workspace Access services (zero trust network access) with Citrix SD-WAN, you can deliver an exceptional user experience safely, regardless of device or location.
Multi-Layer Security with Chrome Enterprise, Citrix Secure Internet Access
With hybrid work here to stay and threat actors becoming more creative in how they attack, a multi-layered security model helps reduce risk exposure and protect against a broader array of threats. Chrome OS is a secure operating system and Chrome Enterprise adds valuable security functions. Citrix Secure Internet Access adds cloud-delivered security functions through Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Firewall, Malware Protection and analytics functionality. With an additional layer of protection by Citrix Secure Internet Access you can:
- Restrict access to inappropriate content: Restrict access for up to 81 website categories considered inappropriate by IT, such as Weapons, Games, Piracy, or Remote Access Tools, or based on a key word in the URL.
- Restrict access for unauthorized users: Block access to and from specific countries, IP addresses and ports.
- Block careless or malicious insider threats: Restrict uploads to storage apps, block personal email accounts, and enforce granular, user-level control on social media apps (for example, only marketing group users can post content on Facebook).
The Secure Internet Access software agent that steers traffic from end user devices to the security service is natively supported on Chrome OS. As a result, adding cloud-delivered security to Chrome OS devices only takes minutes, without additional burden on IT teams.
Zero Trust Network Access Solution with Citrix Secure Workspace Access and Google Cloud
Citrix Secure Workspace Access is a VPN-less solution that delivers zero trust access to IT-sanctioned and Google IAP delivered applications accessed from managed and BYO devices. Citrix Secure Workspace Access provides additional security on top of Google BeyondCorp’s capabilities such as:
- Cloud App Control for SaaS and Web Apps: Applying a watermark, restricting clipboard access, print, copy/paste, downloads, and navigation within a SaaS and web application.
- App Protection Policies: Anti-keylogging and screen capture capabilities which return scrambled keys and black screens to potential threats.
Citrix’s powerful SD-WAN solution enables businesses to fully realize the benefits of SASE by:
- Improving User Experience and Application Performance: Using dynamic packet-level prioritization and steering of traffic with sub-second failover across multiple WAN links and dual-ended QoS, Citrix SD-WAN provides a superior application experience. Citrix SD-WAN was recently ranked No. 1 by Gartner for Application Optimization and Deployment Flexibility.
Through Cloud Direct, Citrix SD-WAN enables resilient and secure internet access to SaaS applications, eliminating latency from backhauling through the data center.
- Providing Security Choice: Citrix SD-WAN and Citrix Secure Internet Access provide a unified approach built on a global cloud architecture. However, Citrix SD-WAN also has native enterprise-grade security features including web filtering, IPS/IDS detection, and signature-and-heuristic-based malware protection. Together with Citrix’s Secure Workspace Access suite, it provides consistent, location-agnostic security for employees.
The Ultimate Experience for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on Google Cloud
If you’re moving your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops workloads to Google Cloud, Citrix SD-WAN’s unique ability to see into the ICA protocol delivers an optimal user experience that no competing SD-WAN vendor can match, with granular QoS and deep visibility. In short, deploying Citrix SD-WAN on both branch and Google Cloud results in the ultimate application experience for users.
Get Started Today
Citrix SD-WAN is available in the Google Cloud Marketplace in five flavors:
- Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition
- Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition-100M
- Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition-200M
- Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition-500M
- Citrix SD-WAN Standard Edition-1000M
Try Citrix SD-WAN on Google Cloud. As we continue to enhance the powerful capabilities of Citrix SD-WAN, we would like to hear from you about how we can make it even better. Please share your feedback.
