Citrix Takes Aim At Cloud Challenges In Data Center

NetScaler Cloud Gateway provides IT administrators a single point of control for orchestrating all of the applications and services their employees use, delivered via Citrix Receiver with native look and feel across any device. It's designed to break up the technology silos that have long been the bane of enterprise IT.

In a keynote Wednesday at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton described NetScaler Cloud Gateway as a "single front door" to an organization's private cloud, a place to aggregate, organize and deliver a range of IT services.

"It puts you as the master of the universe of apps, data and enterprise services," Templeton told a crowd of 5,500 attendees. "You get all the back end services you need to be a service provider. And you can be in control of the services form a security and cost perspective."

NetScaler Cloud Gateway synchronizes Citrix Receiver icons between devices and comes in standalone, virtual and appliance form, according to Templeton, who said Citrix is offering an upgrade path for NetScaler customers.

Slated for launch in Q3, NetScaler Cloud Gateway is Citrix's answer to Horizon App Manager, the hosted identity management service VMware unveiled last week that lets organizations use their existing directory services in the public cloud while maintaining strong security.

Citrix also unveiled a new offering called NetScaler Cloud Bridge, which controls what Templeton called the "back door" between private and public clouds. It connects an organization's data center to any type of off-premise cloud via encrypted tunnel, serving as a bridge between private and public clouds.

Flexibility is the main advantage here: IT administrators can move Web and application servers between different clouds and keep enterprise data safely ensconced in the data center.

"It's going to make your private cloud look infinite in its capacity and elasticity," said Templeton. "You need to make the public cloud look like it's local in your data center, and to do that, you want a fabric that interoperates between private and public clouds."