Citrix and Microsoft Virtualization
Citrix application delivery solutions (for applications, desktops, and servers) along with technology from Microsoft enable IT to flexibly and cost effectively deliver applications and desktops to users anywhere. Taking a page from a successful 20-year partnership in application and desktop virtualization, Citrix recently announced “Project Encore,” extending its collaboration with Microsoft into the adjacent server virtualization market.
A Microsoft partner for nearly two decades, Citrix delivers Windows-based applications and desktops to more than 100 million users in more than 200,000 companies worldwide. Visit the Microsoft - Citrix partnership page for more information.
Solutions from Citrix and Microsoft enable you to reduce costs and increase IT flexibility by centralizing Windows-based applications, desktops, and servers in the data center and dynamically delivering them to users anywhere. This significantly improves agility, security, and performance, while lowering operating costs.
The tight integration of Citrix solutions with Window Server 2008, Hyper-V virtualization technology, Terminal Services presentation virtualization, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 provides application and desktop delivery solutions for customers of all sizes, including enterprise, large, midmarket, and small and midsize businesses.
-
Lower IT Cost of Operations: Consolidate servers, applications, and desktops in the data center for simplified management, reduced infrastructure, and support costs, providing the lowest total cost of operations.
-
Quickly Enable Key Business Initiatives: Deliver Windows-based desktops and applications to users anywhere to enable IT to quickly respond to key strategic business initiatives, such as business continuity, outsourcing/off-shoring, telecommuting, regulatory compliance, and new application roll out.
-
Provide a Superior End-User Experience: Enable all users to access their pristine, personalized desktops and applications from anywhere with best performance, which leads to higher productivity and employee satisfaction due to work flexibility.
Customer Scenario
Traditional IT practices of getting the best-performing client computers (desktops and laptops), highest possible bandwidth for networks, and largest servers in the data center are expensive, not scalable, and are making IT slower and more difficult to manage.
New, end-to-end application delivery solutions break through these traditional silos to provide agility, performance, and security while delivering applications to users anywhere at a much lower cost. Using desktop, application, and server virtualization, organizations can:
- Rapidly and securely deliver applications and desktops to every user, anywhere on the network.
- Centralize and securely manage desktops, applications, and servers from one place.
- Significantly reduce operating costs.
Citrix + Microsoft Solution
To realize the benefits of virtualization, Microsoft and Citrix believe organizations should look for an integrated, end-to-end solution that IT can use to deliver any application to any user at the lowest cost.
In the data center, the best solution is one that is fully compatible with the existing IT infrastructure and has sufficient power and flexibility to adjust to a variety of usage scenarios. Not every virtualization solution provides management of a server base running a mix of operating systems, for example, so that is a key factor to consider when planning to virtualize. Not all solutions provide advanced storage capabilities, so organizations should choose a virtualization environment that takes those needs into account. Finally, IT will continue to have heterogeneous environments with both physical and virtualized servers and desktops. The right solution will give IT the flexibility to manage both physical and virtual resources in a simplified manner.
End users can have very different needs. Users whose job requires repetitive use of only a few applications will benefit most from presentation virtualization. Office workers who need access to a broader range of applications and a personalized environment are candidates for desktop virtualization. Mobile workers need a solution that can package applications and securely deliver them at any time and to any location. Organizations should choose a solution that can satisfy all these scenarios with the best combination of performance and reliability with maximum return on investment.
Citrix and Microsoft have designed their virtualization tools to work together to provide a complete virtualization solution that lowers the cost of operations by simplifying desktop and server life-cycle management; enables IT to respond to key business initiatives, such as business continuity, outsourcing, and compliance; and provides a superior end-user experience by enabling flexible work scenarios. Citrix introduces a new solution called Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V, offering advanced virtualization management capabilities for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to help customers create highly scalable, manageable and agile virtual infrastructures. The new solution will extend the enterprise management capabilities of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center in the areas of storage management, provisioning services and lab automation.
- Citrix Delivery Center
is an application delivery infrastructure system that enables IT to virtualize application resources, manage them centrally, accelerate their performance, and securely deliver them to users anywhere.
- Citrix XenApp
is an end-to-end application delivery system for Windows-based applications that offers optimal application performance and flexible delivery options.
- Citrix XenDesktop
provides simple, secure, and cost-effective delivery of Windows-based desktops, transforming desktop virtualization into an end-to-end desktop delivery solution.
- Citrix XenServer
can virtualize servers and deliver server workloads on demand to both virtual and physical servers.
- Citrix NetScaler
Web application delivery solutions are purpose-built appliances that accelerate application performance up to five times, while simultaneously reducing data center costs and improving Web application security.
- Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V
provides customers with a powerful set of advanced virtualization management capabilities that extend the enterprise management capabilities of Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager
- Pro-enabled management pack
The Citrix NetScaler PRO-enabled management pack monitors and can discover NetScalers, have visibility into status, generate alerts, and perform intelligent reporting on performance characteristics of the NetScaler and the applications hosted. Workflows can be initiated to automatically start or provision VMs based on an entity’s health and automatically update NetScaler load balancing rules.
