Cisco and Citrix are now partners for networking and cloud

Cisco and Citrix declared an development of their desktop virtualization collaboration into three strategic areas: cloud networking, cloud orchestration, and mobile workstyles.

Cisco and Citrix believe the IT industry is near the next major structural transition: the mobile-cloud era. To help business and company customers catch the industry conversion and convert their business models, Cisco and Citrix will work together to unite technology into solutions for the mobile-cloud era.

The extended collaboration will include a significant financial commitment in people and resources to drive market-leading technology advancement, solution incorporation and validation, customer support, and joint go-to-market financial commitment on a international basis.

Cloud networking
Cisco is evolving its L4-L7 services in data centers and cloud infrastructure with an integrated, multi-services architecture. Cisco Cloud Network Services is an ecosystem-based approach that incorporates best-in-class Cisco and partner application and network services. Bringing these key technologies together into an integrated solution will help enterprise and service provider customers deliver true cloud service automation with deep network- and application-level intelligence to speed service deployments.

As part of the strategy, Cisco and Citrix intend to jointly integrate the Citrix NetScaler application delivery controller (ADC) to seamlessly coexist with other Cisco network and security services, such as Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA).

The companies also intend to integrate Cisco Nexus 1000V with Citrix XenServer to enable enterprise and service provider customers to build clouds based in part on key open source technology. Cisco will continue to fully support existing customers of its Application Control Engine (ACE) product line and will recommend Citrix NetScaler as an alternative to customers who want to deploy a next-generation ADC.

Cloud orchestration
Cisco and Citrix intend to develop an integrated cloud solution for enterprise and service provider deployments based on the companies’ best-in-class portfolios. This will include the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco Nexus Series switching, and Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE) components, as well as Citrix’s leading cloud orchestration solution — Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack. When developed, this integrated solution will help enterprise and service provider customers deliver highly efficient public, private and hybrid clouds.

Mobile workstyles
Cisco and Citrix intend to develop “mobile workstyle and BYOD” solutions that give mobile users a unified way to securely access business apps, data, voice and collaboration services from any device, anywhere. The joint solution, when developed, will link Cisco collaboration technology, including tighter integration of the Cisco Jabber client, with the Citrix Receiver self-service mobile access client and Citrix CloudGateway for enterprise mobility management.

The joint solution will also include Citrix ShareFile for secure, cloud-based “follow-me data” services across any mix of user devices. To enable an optimized, monitored and managed rich-media experience for accessing virtual Windows apps and desktops from mobile devices, Citrix will incorporate Cisco MediaNet into Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp. To secure mobile workers, Cisco and Citrix will link Citrix Receiver, Citrix Access Gateway, and CloudGateway with the Cisco secure access portfolio including Cisco AnyConnect, Cisco ASA, and the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE).