Citrix Opens Up the Cloud for VMware Customers

Citrix Systems today announced a new edition of CloudStack™, which will feature enhanced support for both the VMware vSphere and Oracle VM hypervisors, enabling VMware and Oracle customers to manage their virtualized servers as a highly available, scalable cloud computing environment. Citrix CloudStack is not just a traditional enterprise server virtualization platform with cloud management layered on top, it is a production-ready, free and open source cloud infrastructure platform that helps providers of all types deploy and manage simple, cost-effective cloud services that are scalable, secure, and open by design. The new release is based on the same CloudStack solution that has been used by some of the world’s largest and most successful public clouds to roll out new cloud services up to 50 times faster and at one-fifth the cost of alternative solutions¹. This is the first release of the product since Citrix acquired Cloud.com in July.

Recognizing that organizations currently face a daunting task when trying to build their own IaaS cloud environment, Citrix CloudStack provides customers with the fastest path to the cloud by providing the most advanced software technologies for building highly scalable, highly reliable cloud computing environments. More than 60 large-scale production clouds have been deployed using the open source CloudStack, including GoDaddy, GreenQloud, KT, Nokia, Tata Communications and Zynga.

As the industry ventures into the Cloud Era, a vast array of new cloud services will emerge, requiring platforms that are purpose-built for cloud computing – radically different from the traditional enterprise datacenters of today. These platforms need to be designed from the ground up to deliver multi-tier, multi-tenant services in the simplest and most cost-effective way. CloudStack addresses these challenges with a powerful, hypervisor-agnostic solution designed to help organizations build clouds the way the world’s largest and most successful public clouds are built - simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient. With advanced networking capabilities, high-availability and a robust web interface, CloudStack gives users complete control of their cloud infrastructure through a single pane of glass.

"vTax” Break

By providing a cost effective and scalable cloud platform that works with all major enterprise virtualization technologies, Citrix CloudStack allows users to preserve their existing virtualization investments - whether they are based on KVM, Oracle VM, vSphere, XenServer®, or a mix of these technologies - while enabling them to continue to grow their virtual infrastructure. VMware users particularly benefit when they choose to deploy Citrix CloudStack over vCloud Director as their preferred cloud platform. By using Citrix CloudStack, VMware customers not only break free from the proprietary costs that VMware imposes with its platform, but they also gain the added flexibility and control associated with leveraging the most popular open source cloud platform in the market. Additionally, Citrix CloudStack eases the financial impact associated with the "vTax,” the term used by many in the cloud and virtualization communities to refer to the latest update to the VMware vSphere 5 licensing model that added costs to customers’ existing cloud and virtualization implementations. Since CloudStack can support multiple hypervisors in the same cloud, VMware customers can mix and match their virtualization technologies under the same cloud environment and optimize their costs, as well as the business value.

This latest release of CloudStack is a continuation of the company’s efforts to provide VMware customers with an open source choice when building clouds on vSphere. In March, Citrix delivered VMware support into OpenStack and has now extended that work into CloudStack. In addition to adding enhanced support for vSphere and Oracle VM, the upcoming version of Citrix CloudStack will also enable bare metal provisioning, allowing users to increase the agility of their cloud deployment by provisioning and managing workloads on physical servers without a hypervisor.

Product Availability

Citrix CloudStack with support for VMware vSphere and bare metal provisioning is available today as a free download from CloudStack.org or as a commercially supported solution from Citrix. Oracle VM support will be available in October, followed by Microsoft Hyper-V later in Q4. CloudStack can be deployed on-premise or as a hosted cloud service.

Quotes

Peder Ulander, Vice President of Product Marketing, Cloud Platforms Group, Citrix

"By enhancing availability and support for VMware vSphere and Oracle VM, the latest release of Citrix CloudStack enables customers to build clouds on their existing virtualization and datacenter technologies while taking advantage of the most widely deployed open source cloud platform today. A powerful, hypervisor-agnostic solution, CloudStack helps customers build clouds the way the world’s largest and most successful public clouds are built - simple, automated, elastic, scalable and massively efficient. And by providing advanced enterprise features that support vSphere and OVM in a free, production-ready offering, users are given a choice, not a surcharge, when building out their cloud platform.”

Ichiro Nakayama, Division Director of Business Development, IDC Frontier (IDCF), a subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan

"IDC Frontier, a subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan, is the market leading provider of cloud services in Japan with its innovative NOAH Cloud Services product, a fully-automated cloud management service with an open API that is optimized specifically for the Japanese market. We chose Citrix CloudStack based on the comprehensiveness of the solution and its ability to help us to quickly come to market with a highly differentiated and customized cloud platform running on top of our VMware installation.”

Related Links:

• Expert Blog: CloudStack, The Best Kept Secret in Cloud Computing
• Announcement: Citrix Changes the Game in Cloud Infrastructure with Cloud.com Acquisition
• Expert Blog: OSCON 2011 - Open Source Thriving in the Cloud
• Expert Blog: Citrix and CloudStack, a match made in Heaven (or in the Clouds)
• Expert Blog: Bringing CloudStack and OpenStack Together

Follow us online:

• Twitter: @Citrix, @Ulander, @Reillyusa, @cloudstack, @mrhinkle
• Citrix on Facebook
• CloudStack.org: the free and open source community

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leading provider of virtual computing solutions that help people work and play from anywhere on any device. More than 230,000 enterprises rely on Citrix to create better ways for people, IT and business to work through virtual meetings, desktops and datacenters. Citrix virtualization, networking and cloud solutions deliver over 100 million corporate desktops and touch approximately 75 percent of Internet users each day. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies in 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2010 was $1.87 billion. Learn more at www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the IT spending environment, revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products and services, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

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¹ Based on Cloud.com customer benchmark study, October 2010