Citrix has joined forces with Cisco again to provide services they claim would improve data centre operations and application deployment for cloud administrators.
The Citrix NetScaler will be integrated with Cisco’s Application Centric Intrastructure (ACI), which is made up of Cisco’s APIC controller and Nexus 9000 switching fabric.
The integration, which is available this summer, is expected to help cloud administrators to better control their Layer 4-7 network services while maintaining the benefits of an elastic and automated cloud network infrastructure.
In a blog, Steve Shah, director of product management at Citrix, said the integration goes across two dimensions: native networking integration and automation-telemetry integration.
"The native networking integration is the underpinning of the virtual network. It enables the NetScaler to be dynamically stitched into any arbitrary part of the network based on need," he explained.
"For example, if an application is spinning up in rack 10, but the NetScaler instance needed is out in rack 100 and the ASA firewall is out in rack 140, the ACI fabric has the means necessary to weave the virtualised application server into the same network as the NetScaler and ASA using service chaining technology.
The deal comes not too long after the two companies teamed up for an enterprise mobility infrastructure platform that claims to simplify how organisations provide secure access to appls, data, communications and services on any device.
Soni Jiandani, Cisco’s SVP, added: "The technology integration between Cisco ACI and Citrix NetScaler provides a central point of control with automated service life cycle for L4-L7 services, thus reducing the complexity of managing multiple control points."
