GigaSpaces, a provider of application platforms for Java and .NET environments, announced it has partnered with desktop virtualization specialist Citrix Systems to provide an open and elastic cloud-enabled platform. Integrating GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) with Citrix OpenCloud virtualization and networking infrastructure provides enterprise IT with an integrated and elastic application platform, a GigaSpaces release said.
According to a company release, the joint solution is designed to provide an “evolutionary” path to IT solutions without incurring the costs of rewriting and rearchitecting existing systems. Integration between GigaSpaces XAP for Web, application and data virtualization, Citrix NetScaler for network virtualization and Citrix XenServer for compute virtualization creates an elastic and open application framework, helping ensure that organizations can upgrade their data centers and create hybrid cloud-data center combinations with minimal application changes.
“Citrix NetScaler and XenServer form the foundation for some of the largest, most dynamic data centers in the world,” said Sunil Potti, vice president of product management and marketing for Citrix’s networking and cloud group. “GigaSpaces XAP integration lets Spring, J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition] and .NET applications hosted in these data centers elastically scale up and down as capacity needs change.”
Potti explained that with the combined Citrix and GigaSpaces technology in place, organizations will be able to extend the data center and the applications that run in these environments beyond currently known limits (and, when needed, physical boundaries). “It allows enterprises to leverage historical investments in hardware and applications while easing long-term application development and deployment,” Potti said.
The integration is immediately available and has been verified as Citrix Ready. The Citrix Ready program helps customers identify third-party solutions that are recommended to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions from Citrix. Enterprises already using NetScaler, XenServer or XAP will be able to integrate the additional components, a Citrix release noted, and new customers will find that they will be able to more quickly develop, deploy and operate existing and new applications and hardware when they add the new solution to their existing infrastructure.
“Our joint customers will benefit from the combined years of experience that Citrix and GigaSpaces offer in providing the best hardware and software platforms for flexible application deployment,” said GigaSpaces CEO Zeev Bikowsky. “With the combination of Citrix and GigaSpaces technologies, companies can bring IT operations to the future without severing their ties to the past.”