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Citrix Systems

How Citrix Aims To Drag SMBs Into The ‘Cloud Era’

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Citrix today announced a new set of products, solutions and programs designed to help small and medium businesses move from the PC Era to the Cloud Era by capitalizing on the benefits of desktop virtualization.

Central to the company’s new SMB initiative is the release of an all-new version of Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, the all-in-one virtual desktop solution designed specifically for SMBs.

VDI-in-a-Box 5 is the first Citrix release of this desktop virtualization product following the acquisition of Kaviza in May 2011. In addition, Citrix announced a new solution combining Citrix VDI-in-a-Box and the Citrix GoToManage cloud-based support offering, making it easy for managed service providers and IT staff to remotely monitor and support virtual desktop deployments at multiple sites or customer locations.

Citrix also announced a new channel partner specialization for the Citrix Solution Advisor Program, called SMB Specialist. They will have access to an extensive set of sales tools, free online training and pre-sales support focused specifically on helping them successfully engage and service SMB customers.

Citrix VDI-in-a-Box 5 will be released this quarter. A free technology preview trial is available here.

Cisco, Citrix Join Forces To Deliver Rich Media-Enabled Virtual Desktops

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Cisco and Citrix Systems have announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance to develop and deliver solutions that help customers simplify and accelerate large-scale desktop virtualization deployments.

Through this alliance, Cisco and Citrix will drive innovations that simplify the deployment of high-definition virtual desktops and applications and improve end-user experiences over a Citrix HDX-enabled Cisco network.

The companies will also continue to enhance and build upon their data center solutions and cloud technologies to help accelerate deployment of cloud services.

In addition, the two companies will invest in joint go-to-market activities that will focus on driving primary product and services demand in high growth market areas such as desktop virtualization and cloud markets.

Release: Citrix XenServer 6

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Citrix Systems has announced the availability of XenServer 6, the most recent edition of its server virtualization product line.

As a key component of the Citrix cloud computing and virtualization strategy, XenServer 6 brings new optimizations and improved scalability and performance for cloud infrastructure, desktop virtualization and networking.

Rather than attempting to force-fit cloud capabilities into existing server virtualization architectures, XenServer addresses these challenges by delivering a cloud-optimized virtual platform that helps cloud providers produce differentiated solutions that meet the needs of their customers.

In addition, by leveraging XenServer 6 with the recently-released Citrix CloudStack, users can be assured the core component of their cloud infrastructure has the network and virtualization optimizations necessary for the same scale-out architectures employed by the world’s largest and most successful cloud providers today.

Citrix Reaches For The Cloud.com, Acquires Cloud Computing Startup For A Reported $200 Million+

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Citrix this morning announced that it has acquired Cloud.com, a provider of software infrastructure platforms for cloud providers. The company’s CloudStack product line helps providers of all types deploy and manage simple, cost-effective cloud services that are scalable, secure, and open by design.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but TechCrunch reports that Citrix paid more than $200 million for the cloud computing startup.

Also read: Citrix Acquires Cloud.com: An Analysis from CloudAve

Industry analysts expect a massive build out in cloud infrastructure, creating a new market projected to exceed $11 billion by the end of 2013.

The Cloud.com product line is not a traditional enterprise server virtualization platform with cloud management layered on top. It is a hypervisor-agnostic solution designed from the ground up to help providers build clouds the way the world’s largest and most successful public clouds are built – simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient.

With the addition of Cloud.com, Citrix now offers a complete portfolio of virtualization, orchestration and networking solutions purpose built for what it dubs the ‘Cloud Era’. The Cloud.com product line will continue to support commercial hypervisors such as Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere, as well as open source hypervisors like Xen. Citrix intends to add support for Microsoft products like Hyper-V and System Center to the Cloud.com product line, as well as support a full range of “platform-as-a-service” development environments, storage systems, servers and management software.

As a founding member of Openstack.org, Citrix is the second largest contributor to the project and is a member of the OpenStack policy board. Citrix product support for OpenStack was initially announced at the recent Citrix Synergy conference under the code name “Project Olympus.”

With this acquisition, Citrix will also be extending OpenStack support to the Cloud.com product line in an upcoming release later this year.

Cloud.com CEO Sheng Liang will continue to lead the design, architecture and technology of the CloudStack product line, reporting to Sameer Dholakia, group VP and GM of the newly-formed Cloud Platforms product group at Citrix.

The Cloud.com CloudStack solution is available to cloud providers today, with Citrix branded versions coming in a future release.

Cotendo Raises $17 Million From Citrix, Juniper Networks And Others

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Cotendo, provider of cloud-based acceleration technologies, announced today the completion of a $17 million private funding round that will fuel the company’s “long-term growth strategy and continued technology innovation in the delivery of highly-personalized dynamic content for mobile and web applications”.

In addition, the funds will be used to continue Cotendo’s global expansion into new markets and fast growing regions around the world.

Strategic investors and new business partners Citrix Systems and Juniper Networks, through its Junos Innovation Fund, participated in this round of funding along with existing venture backers Sequoia, Benchmark and Tenaya Capital.

The synergy between the services and technologies of Citrix Systems and Cotendo blend on-premise physical and virtual appliances, content acceleration and cloud services that will accelerate and optimize delivery from the end user all the way to the enterprise over distributed networks, thereby improving end user experience from any location to any device.

The relationship between Juniper Networks and Cotendo will address the demand of service providers for technologies that will enable them to offer value added services and over-the-top services to content providers. This includes mobile carriers, large ISPs, and telecom companies that buy products to serve enterprise customers.

Cotendo will also launch and commercialize its new Mobile Acceleration Suite, and announced today the new frontier of acceleration services, ensuring fast and reliable delivery of mobile content regardless of location, device, or application.

With this funding round Cotendo will embark on a rapid sales and business development expansion in Asia-Pacific and Latin America to address the growing demand for mobile content acceleration services in places where the Smart Phone frequently replaced the PC as a primary computing and networking vehicle.

(Via TechCrunch)

Citrix Acquires “VDI-in-a-Box” Company Kaviza

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Citrix Systems recently announced that it has acquired Kaviza, makers of an all-in-one “VDI-in-a-Box” solution for small and medium business. It complements the company’s XenDesktop product line for enterprise-class desktop virtualization.

Kaviza VDI-in-a-Box is not just a scaled-down enterprise product, but instead gives SMB customers everything they need to “go virtual” with VDI in a single, easy-to-deploy software virtual appliance.

Customers can continue to purchase VDI-in-a-box from Kaviza resellers. Starting July 1, 2011 customers will also be able to buy from Citrix Solution Advisors.