Blue Chip Welcomes Cisco and Citrix Strategic Alliance

11th November 2011

As great advocates of Cisco and Citrix Systems technologies, we’re supporters of the collaboration between the two companies, announced last month. The aim of the ‘strategic alliance’ is ‘to develop and deliver solutions that help companies to simplify and accelerate large-scale desktop virtualisation deployments’, driving innovations that ‘deliver high-definition virtual desktops and applications and improve end-user experiences over a highly secure Citrix HDX™-enabled Cisco® network.’ 

Needless to say, the development and enhancement of their data centre solutions and cloud technologies go hand in hand with this. 

In many ways, the alliance is an affirmation of the future: the speculation about cloud computing is surely at an end when two industry leading players form an alliance to actively develop media-rich applications that the mobile work force needs to access from any device, anywhere, anytime via desktop virtualisation. 

Questions about security, flexibility and cost-savings are being answered with the higher value of delivering desktops and applications as a centralised service. The companies say that ‘ innovative solutions like Cisco Virtualisation Experience Infrastructure (VXI) with Citrix XenDesktop® span desktop virtualisation, networking, datacentre, multimedia and endpoint devices will support customers through the radical transition to the Cloud.’ 

The combination of Cisco’s cutting edge knowledge of networking, datacentre, endpoint devices and collaboration, with Citrix’s dominance of virtualisation and the delivery of desktops, applications and data, this partnership will be watched closely by all. 

The potential is limitless; businesses will be able to easily and cost effectively deploy virtual desktops to millions of mobile devices, while the data centre solutions will give organisations the basis to deliver IT as a service across multiple networks and geographies. 

In addition, the two companies are investing in ‘joint go-to-market activities’ focusing on driving primary product and services demand in high growth market areas such as desktop virtualisation and cloud markets. Recently, Cisco showcased the first deliverables of this strategic alliance and other VXI solutions at Citrix Synergy in Barcelona (October 25 – 27). 

Phil Sherburne, vice president, Enterprise Systems and Architectures, Cisco said: "Our first deliverables will be focused on giving end users a rich multimedia experience of voice, video and data on their virtual desktops and apps over the Cisco Intelligent Network, so that from any device from wherever they are, IT managers can deliver the same superior experience at a lower cost."

Bob Schultz, group vice president and general manager, Enterprise Desktops and Apps group at Citrix added: “This expanded agreement will lay the groundwork to deliver a wide range of market-leading, integrated solutions that allow customers to embrace consumerisation and deliver IT services with unparalleled efficiency and impact." 

One thing is for sure – with serious investment and innovation from these companies, it looks like the Cloud is here to stay.