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Enterprise access solutions provider Citrix Systems is building a horizontal portfolio of products and solutions through partnerships as well as a handful of buy-outs. The company’s aim is to be an integrated end-to-end provider of access solutions.
Murli Thirumale, group vice-president and general manager, Gateways Group, Citrix Systems, spoke to Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News and shared the company’s plans and integration roadmap. Thirumale was the former CEO and co-founder of Secure Sockets Layer-Virtual Private Network (SSL-VPN) start-up Net6, which Citrix acquired in 2004. Excerpts from the interview:
What is Citrix’s market positioning and integration strategy after the acquisitions made in the last two years?
Citrix has taken a horizontal view of the access world. We are very focused on problems of access right from application delivery and performance, application networking to security. Within this area, we want to provide the best in class technology and end-to-end solutions. What differentiates us is that we define the problem axis and solutions, which involve technology both at the user and the middleware and network end.
Citrix Presentation Server has been around for around 15 years. What we are doing now is taking new products and adding new markets in the area of access. We are picking areas that are early in the growth curve. If there are mature technologies, we would then partner with such companies than enter the space ourselves.
Now we have taken some steps to enhance capabilities such as adding on SSL-VPN from Net6 for secure access while Netscaler sits at the application layer. We recently acquired another company called Teros which is an application security company, and another called Reflectant that measures app delivery.
Most of these like SSL-VPN are high margin areas and so are network acceleration and application performance. All the missing pieces in the access arena represent our roadmap. Our strategy roadmap is to bid or buy.
How would Citrix differentiate itself from other players since you are getting into so many areas?
What is unique about Citrix is that a lot of our products work well end-to-end. We are in the process of integrating all the aspects of access clients such as Reflectant, Net6 and others. We have an existing customer footprint of 56 million desktops, which have Citrix clients. That’s a huge advantage. Many of the networking companies do not have such an extensive client footprint. At the same time, we have intimate knowledge of the actual applications themselves.
Customers today have to run multiple clients for each of their applications on individual PCs. This costs quite a bit. All our clients run on a single solution. This means that there is a dramatic reduction in support costs for customers. When they start a branch office-they just have to download and run a Citrix client on a PC to get the branch up and running on multiple applications.
Citrix is also focusing a lot on access security. What are your initiatives in this area?
Citrix is not the usual security company. The industry is moving from the traditional perimeter security, which forms the secure boundary of an enterprise network towards access security. Perimeter security is about keeping the bad guys out. But this model alone doesn’t work anymore and is inadequate because of changes like broadband access, increased mobility, and viruses and worms. So what we are doing is to add a counterpart-called access security.
This includes endpoint security, access control, SSL-VPN and application security. We have built a portfolio of products and partners in this area. Access and perimeter security don’t clash but they are almost like overlay networks.
Unlike traditional SSL-VPN vendors who have gone for a blended IP Sec-SSL-VPN or network connect mode, Citrix’s Net6 device creates a complete SSL-VPN tunnel similar to IP-sec, but hides the network, and also enables secure User Defined Protocol (UDP) traffic such as audio. On our access gateway, the client creates a complete SSL tunnel similar to IP Sec but does not bridge it over layer 2 and 3.
The blended model is not user-friendly since users have to switch between the IP Sec and SSL-VPN modes depending on the type of application. Classic SSL-VPNs work through URL rewriting, which webbify applications to get through a firewall. This would require them to rewrite applications. We provide ease of use features and use packet interception technology on the client side
This is a true hybrid that enables full access and yet provides controls.
How do you plan to approach the Indian market?
Citrix hopes to tap the existing installed base of 1000 customers in India and is also looking at verticals like BFSI and technology companies.
In the last one-year, new offerings from Citrix contributed 14-15 per cent of the company’s overall revenues of $909 million. In the last one-year, new products contributed to 14-15% of the overall revenues.
© CyberMedia News
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