Citrix™ and Cisco™ have been partners for years. Citrix™ has delivered some of the world’s largest virtual desktop installations together using Cisco UCS™, Cisco Nexus™, and Citrix XenDesktop™. With the joint experiences tying together applications, infrastructure, and networking, it was a natural step for us to collaborate and solve some of the data center’s most pressing problems rather than go it alone. To say mobility has been a massive disruption is an understatement. We all understand how it has changed the way users fundamentally interact with the enterprises. But what we don’t talk about is how it has changed the requirements of the data center. The drastic shift has required us to reexamine the interaction of apps and mobile users and its implications on next generation cloud networks. With Cisco’s vPath™ service chaining technology added to Citrix NetScaler, Citrix™ has worked around this limitation. Using the Cisco Nexus™ 1000 virtual switch in a Cisco Nexus™ powered data center, a Cisco vPath™ enabled Citrix NetScaler™ can now be woven into the path of any application in any part of the network without having to change any physical network topology.

Optimization—is a well—researched and debated term for long time and NetScaler as an ADC excels in traffic optimization for various applications, protocols and use cases. In last decade whenever the term “Optimization” came in, it always referred to how one can optimize the performance and efficiency of applications and severs. Today the situation has changed drastically with Mobility coming into play. Enterprises have embraced the concept of BYOD which further pushes Mobility as strategic move. All the Apps and Data are now streaming to Mobile devices and that pushes up the need for optimization of Mobile streaming. As business happens through Mobile, productivity on Mobile devices is a key concern for Enterprises. Citrix NetScaler MobileStream™ optimization technology focuses on new challenges and improves delivery of Data and Apps on Mobile devices by 5X. Now you see there are so many changes with Mobility and no single solution which can cover all of what we need to deal with. Hence the Citrix NetScaler MobileStream™ solution packages multiple technologies in single bundle which takes care of optimization from network and connectivity to application layer.

Citrix NetScaler Remote Services Blade On Cisco Nexus Series Switches

Leveraging Cisco RISE™ technology, Citrix NetScaler™ seamlessly integrates with the Cisco Nexus™ series switch for simplified deployment, automated control and lower cost of operations while delivering the standalone performance, availability and reliability of a best—in—class ADC. Citrix NetScaler™ supports an excellent layer of APIs called the NITRO APIs, which are RESTful and greatly superior to the last generation APIs. These APIs are fast, responsive and lightweight, providing hierarchical relationship of objects, allowing bulk processing and providing several other benefits over the traditional approach. With these quick SDKs, you can integrate with any automation framework and model. These SDKs are available for Java, .NET, Python and REST, which would enable the integration with any model which can simply work over HTTP or HTTPS. For Windows users, the .NET SDK can be used for PowerShell based automation. Application fluency is foundational — in order for data center networks to react to the interaction between mobile users and applications, it is a foundational requirement to understand the application semantics and how these mobile interactions affect network architectures.

Citrix And Cisco Deliver Business And Application Agility With ACI

Citrix NetScaler™ and Cisco ACI™ enable data center and cloud administrators to holistically control L2—L7 network services in a unified manner via seamless insertion and automation of best—in—class Citrix NetScaler™ services into next—generation datacenters built on Cisco’s ACI™ Architectures. Citrix NetScaler™ leverages the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller™ (APIC) to programmatically automate network provisioning and control based on application requirements and policies for both data center and enterprise environments. From the Citrix™ perspective, opening the Cisco ACI™ policy engine to multi—vendor infrastructure is a logical next step to open source data center operations, and aligns with Citrix’™ strategy. Citrix™ is participating in the standardization process with Cisco™ within the IETF standards body. As the standard is forged, Citrix™ intends to integrate the technology across our Citrix XenServer™, Citrix NetScaler™ and Citrix XenMobile™ product lines. Different applications need different network services to drive them. Some need just an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) such as a Citrix NetScaler™, others need additional security from a modern firewall.

Unified Vs. Integrated

Citrix™ have solved some technical problems. And Citrix™ addressed real business needs for enabling true data center agility. Citrix™ is working on a Cisco™ validated solution guide. But if there is an issue with Citrix NetScaler™ integrated into the broader Cisco™ fabric, who do you call? Citrix™ or Cisco™? As announced, Cisco™ has integrated in Citrix NetScaler™ and will be making it available on the Cisco Nexus™ 1110 platform, Cisco UCS™ server, and generic x86 servers. The result, Citrix NetScaler™ 1000V—sold and supported exclusively through Cisco™. With performance up to 4Gbps, Citrix™ expects it to address a wide range of ADC requirements demanded by Enterprises, Cloud Providers and Telcos. When Citrix™ set out to address what both companies felt was a major shift in the data center landscape, Citrix™ and Cisco™ were both pleased at the prospect of extending our relationship further in the realm of intelligent application delivery services in the core data center fabric. Today Citrix™ and Cisco™ have seen that work finally announced and Citrix™ and Cisco™ are excited by the progress so far. At the same time, there is a lot more to do and more to come.

Features And Benefits

Citrix™ and Cisco™ have delivered the Citrix NetScaler™ 1000V, a best—in—class application delivery controller that redefines L4—L7 services. Building on Cisco™ strength in Unified Fabric™ and Unified Compute™, and Citrix™ strength in intelligent, application delivery, the architecture runs on the Nexus Virtual Service™ Platform to provide a virtual network infrastructure that delivers scalability, elastic instantiation, and multi—tenant operation, all with a common approach to service provisioning and management. The Citrix NetScaler™ 1000V is available via the normal Cisco sales and worldwide channels, providing a smooth migration path for Cisco ACE™, GSS™ and CSS™ customers. Citrix NetScaler™ is the Cisco ACE™ replacement product recommended by Cisco™. Services need to be software — the adoption of software for networking services is key for creating a truly malleable solution. Software driven services enable data centers to react quickly to changes in user interactions, mobile service deployments and broadly the overall application context. This makes it possible to integrate the right network services in the right place for the right need.