Cisco and Citrix in NetScaler resale, integration deal
Vendors evolve year-old partnership with view to cloud, mobility and networking opportunities
The relationship between Cisco and Citrix continues to grow closer -- with the networking vendor this week announcing it will resell a customised version of Citrix' NetScaler ADC application delivery controller.
The technology will also be tied into the Cisco Unified Fabric Cloud Network Services portfolio.
These moves are the next steps in a year-old partnership between the pair, focused on cloud, mobility and networking. It will improve partner options for delivering cloud services automation with simplified networking services.
Beginning this autumn, Cisco will begin reselling and supporting a customised version of NetScaler ADC dubbed Citrix NetScaler 1000V.
The jointly developed version of NetScaler ADC will also be tightly integrated with the Cisco Nexus 1100 Cloud Services Platform as well as vPath, a service insertion feature in Nexus 1000V virtual switces that redirects cloud traffic to virtual application services.
The two companies will also work together on go-to-market initiatives, including new Cisco Validated Design (CVD) reference documents for customers and partners working with Cisco's Unified Data Center strategy.
Sunil Potti, vice president and GM for the NetScaler group at Citrix, said that both Cisco and Citrix believe that the data center is undergoing a fundamental transformation, driven by cloud, mobility and virtualisation.
"Managing application workloads in these modern datacentres requires a flexible, scalable, application-aware network. To help customers make this transition, Cisco and Citrix are collaborating to unify best-in-class technologies based on Citrix NetScaler and Cisco Nexus to accelerate the transformation to new network service delivery models in the Mobile-Cloud Era."
NetScaler integration addresses emerging needs
Cisco's vice president of datacentre technology and product marketing, Ram Appalaraju, wrote on his blog that the Citrix collaboration is being driven by advances in cloud computing, datacentre consolidation, mobility and big data that are raising the bar for network simplification and automation.
"As virtual networking and programmable overlay networks evolve to meet these challenges, an equal evolution needs to take place in Layer 4-7 application networking services and security to support widespread virtualisation, application mobility, cloud architectures and network orchestration," he said.
"NetScaler 1000V fills an important void in Cisco's virtual product architecture for an application delivery controller solution to give applications critical performance enhancements, offload application servers, and to help guarantee quality of service and improve end user experience."
Appalaraju went on to add that virtual services can be more flexibly deployed to cloud service providers without modification, while relying on the same infrastructure and policies that they might have with corresponding physical appliances in their on-premises datacentres.
Next steps in the Cisco-Citrix relationship call for Citrix' NetScaler SDX service delivery networking platform and NetScaler MPX hardware-based ADC to be attached Cisco's Nexus 7000 Series switches, executives said.
Jeff Jack, group general manager for network integration at longstanding Citrix and Cisco partner Dimension Data, said: "The collaboration between Cisco and Citrix [will] provide clients with a truly integrated network services solution in the datacentre."
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