Citrix claims industry-first hybrid cloud networking service

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Citrix has claimed an industry-first, knitting together on-premise and off-premise networking for a faster hybrid cloud deployment.

CloudConnectors requires the IT department to purchase solutions for both in-house and off-premise setups, the company revealed today during its Synergy 2011 event in Barcelona.

The first product, CloudConnector for CDN (cloud delivery network) due out in November, uses an optional addition NetScaler appliances running in-house with a service from Cotendo to accelerate hybrid cloud infrastructure.

The NetScaler option starts at $5,000, whilst the Cotendo offering starts at $500/month.

“Connecting cloud from private to public is a big deal,” said Citrix CEO Mark Templeton.

“NetScaler CloudConnectors allow you to add connections to CDN. It extends the capabilities of NetScaler deeper into the network… so you can deliver the kind of predictable end user experience you want.”

CloudConnector for CDN seeks to get around a major problem in CDN. CDN typically caches content at the “edge” of the internet, meaning the data it provides end users is not as close to real-time as many would like.

Connecting cloud from private to public is a big deal.

The new Citrix product gives IT departments an optimised connection between their datacentre and the Cotendo acceleration points-of-presence (PoPs) at the “internet edge.” All this is done using TCP optimisations, data compression and data deduplication.

“Coordination between the CDN and on-premise NetScaler infrastructure allows for the use of sophisticated symmetric techniques such as advanced TCP optimisations, compression and data deduplication to run between the data center and the Internet edge,” Morgan Gerhart, product manager at Citrix, explained in a blog post.

“This allows for all that dynamic content that can’t just be cached to be accelerated to the Internet edge nonetheless.”

For those concerned about security, all data sent between the two points is encrypted.

CloudGateway and Bridge updates

During its Synergy 2011 conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Citrix introduced its CloudGateway and CloudBridge products with Netscaler, which have also been upgraded.

The CloudGateway has been given a strategy revamp, creating an enterprise version and a freemium option. The free version, CloudGateway Express, is solely for maintaining control and aggregating Windows apps. The business edition is for all Windows, web and SaaS apps.

The gateway has been made available for tech preview immediately.

The CloudBridge, also designed to connect the private datacentre to the public cloud, has been given a number of enhancements. The most significant addition was an IaaS cloud catalogue, which provides IT admins with a list of certified public cloud providers who can offer the extra capacity a customer needs.

For further coverage of cloud computing visit our sister site Cloud Pro.

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