Citrix and Cisco
October 17, 2012 1 Comment
The rumor mill turns out to be pretty accurate. Cisco announced today in Spain that they’re partnering with Citrix for a number of items, including integrating NetScaler as their next generation load balancer in with other network services (vWAAS, ASA, Nexus 1000v). Citrix has also announced a trade-in program called AMP to help with/encourage migration to NetScaler. It looks like Citrix will be taking the reigs, and it’s mostly a Citrix sale/deployment.
The announcement was light on details, and many questions remain. Will it be an OEM deal? Just a reseller deal, or “hey go talk to Citrix and buy their stuff”. Will it involve their physical devices or virtual appliance (I suspect both).
So for the first time in almost 15 years, Cisco is not in the load balancer business.
The Data Center Overlords 
I’m struggling to see the advantage of a customer of purchasing NetScaler via Cisco versus just looking at F5 | Radware | A10 etc. The integration that is needed in this space is on the application end of things primarily and for management on the orchestration / automation side. I’m very interested to see how this effects Cisco’s relationship with VMware and VCE, integration with VCD and View may be a way off.