Part 5, the final instalment in our exclusive cloudDNA mini-series, looks at how Citrix ADC, SD-WAN and ADM can extend beyond Azure to become the smart way to connect users to services in an increasingly hybrid multi-cloud world.
Our “Get More from Azure” five-part mini-series (find the other videos here) has discussed how the Citrix Networking portfolio – Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler), Citrix ADM (formerly MAS) and Citrix SD-WAN – can function to improve availability, security, performance, efficiency and more in Azure, enabling you to transform the services you provide in the platform. However, this impressive product set provide benefits which extend beyond Azure to revolutionise management, measurement, control and user experience in the hybrid multi-cloud world also. Watch the video above for the full details, but here are a few key points:
The full package: why shop in ten stores when you could get all you need in just one?
A simple, real-life example for understanding the cohesive power and reach of the Citrix Cloud Networking portfolio is that of your weekly shop. If you had a long list of things you needed to achieve and obtain and you needed to work efficiently, would you spend hours walking up and down your high street, popping in to each individual shop to get your fruit and vegetables, baked goods, cheese, stationary, newspapers etc. all individually? Or would you head for a superstore, where you could achieve everything in one place? You would head for the superstore – it’s faster and it’s more efficient.
The same is true in delivery mechanisms. When delivering services from your cloud platform, you have to be able to do a certain set of jobs; from securing the platform, to authentication, to load-balancing to ensure availability, to potentially working across multiple data centres and clouds – those are a lot of individual products or functions. What the App Delivery Controller does is consolidate all of that into one single device, one location to visit – like a superstore.
How to use this technology to work more efficiently in a couple of key use cases
There are two key use cases we tend to see here at cloudDNA where this technology can really make an impact. Either businesses are aiming to deliver desktops in traditional workspace enterprise applications; a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) type of use case, often which is being extended in to public cloud. Or, they are taking the web-centric route, delivering web services or IoT-type services to clients. While the use cases are different, there are a lot of similarities.
We manage traffic across our resources with load balancers, either at a local level or across data centres and clouds. We deploy individual point products (often virtual ones) to perform these duties. Providing some form of personalised web experience or a virtual desktop? There will likely be authentication requirements that take another virtual machine to deliver, a gateway device or similar. Want to boost user experience for all device types? Gain service visibility metrics? Offload services from the web tier like encryption? With each requirement comes another workload and adds to operational effort, complexity and cost – and we haven’t got in to Web App Firewalls, API management, BOT protection… the list goes on and on.
Your one-stop solution: a consolidated delivery mechanism
Citrix ADC provides all of the above functionality plus a wide range of other features to help organisations get more from their Azure investments but the key differentiator in the Citrix story is what happens at the front door. While other ADC vendor solutions have some parity with Citrix ADC, the Citrix Cloud Networking portfolio includes a class leading SD-WAN solution that can provide a secure, reliable alternative to Azure ExpressRoutes and further extend the network edge beyond the traditional core data centre cloud access point. Other clouds, traditional data centres, branch and power home worker locations now seamlessly integrate at the SD-WAN edge for true affordable hybrid multi-cloud network connectivity.
When Citrix ADC and SD-WAN are combined with the cloud based centralised management and analytics services, the true potential of next generation hybrid multi cloud initiatives becomes a connected reality. Have a look at the video to learn more.
FIND OUT MORE
If you would like to talk to us about any of the points raised or you have your own challenges that you’d like discuss, please call 0330 010 3443 or email [email protected].
