Citrix today unveiled NetScaler 10, a landmark release that brings the elasticity, simplicity and expandability of the cloud to both enterprise and carrier networks. NetScaler 10 features the groundbreaking new Citrix TriScale technology, making it easy for businesses of any size to scale their networks “up, in and out” with ease, just like the world’s largest public clouds. This revolutionary new technology elevates NetScaler beyond traditional service and application delivery controllers, creating the industry’s most advanced cloud networking platform. The new release ships today and will be featured prominently in the upcoming Citrix Synergy 2012 conference May 9-11 in San Francisco.    

NetScaler is already well established as the industry’s leading internet delivery system, touching an estimated 75 percent of internet users each day. The new NetScaler 10 release builds on this leadership to deliver the world’s most advanced “cloud networking platform”, giving customers a single integrated solution that brings the elasticity, simplicity and expandability of the cloud to networks of any size. This powerful combination helps customers deliver public and private cloud services with the best performance, security and reliability to any device.

Introducing NetScaler TriScale Technology

The centerpiece of NetScaler 10 is the product’s new TriScale technology, a revolutionary advancement of the NetScaler architecture that brings multi-dimensional scalability to enterprise datacenters and provider networks. This innovative approach delivers the unique capability to Scale Up the performance of a single appliance for greater elasticity, Scale Out to expand capacity by deploying NetScaler appliances in a unified cluster, and Scale In by consolidating multiple networking functions into a single NetScaler service delivery platform to dramatically simplify network infrastructure – all with the same powerful, but simple, management capability.

For the first time, datacenter and cloud managers can provide a comprehensive set of network-based services at virtually unbounded network flexibility and scale. This ensures that network infrastructure always has the capacity and performance to handle the demands of even the most intensive application or service in the most efficient way possible – and that customers never overpay for capacity they don’t need. The new TriScale technology enables customers to:    

1. Scale Up elasticity with 5x faster performance on-demand with the simple NetScaler Pay-As-You-Grow software-based licensing model. This eliminates costly over provisioning, avoids regular ‘forklift’ appliance upgrades, and obviates the need to buy expensive chassis-based systems just to reserve empty slots in anticipation of future growth.    

2. Scale In consolidation with the multi-function NetScaler SDX platform to simplify datacenter networks, eliminate appliance sprawl and streamline operational management by consolidating up to 40 independently managed devices into a single, easy-to-manage appliance. Unlike alternative solutions, the new NetScaler TriScale technology consolidates multiple appliances with no loss of functionality, and no performance compromises.    

3. Scale Out to expand capacity up to 32x by seamlessly adding appliances to existing NetScaler deployments in a “plug-and-play” fashion with TriScale clustering, without the need to stand up redundant high-availability pairs. For the first time, datacenter managers can build a highly efficient infrastructure that meets current application demand, and then scale incrementally as traffic increases, with the capability to reach unprecedented performance levels exceeding 1 terabit/sec (Tbps).    

More than 160 new Features

In addition to the new NetScaler TriScale technology, NetScaler 10 also includes more than 160 new features, capabilities and enhancements, including:    

• New ActionAnalytics provide real-time monitoring and adaptive policy controls that transform raw data gathered by NetScaler into actionable information to deliver better business intelligence and automatically tune application and service delivery policies across public and private clouds.
• Built-in cloud connectivity with Citrix CloudBridge, making it easy for customers to extend their enterprise datacenters into external clouds with optimal security, performance and manageability.
• New scalability, security and visibility enhancements for NetScaler DataStream technology that improve the performance of database infrastructures - further extending the product’s leadership in the emerging arena of database scaling.
• New capabilities to power the delivery of virtual desktops with Citrix XenDesktop, including support for smartcard authentication for secure access to virtual desktops, and sophisticated policy management that completely separates virtual desktop management from on-going network administration tasks.      
• Powerful advancements to the Citrix Application Firewall module, making it easier to protect against leakage of sensitive data and fully supporting the common event format (CEF) standard. These improvements make it easier for security analysts to correlate app firewall data to gain greater insights into the increasingly sophisticated threats facing all types of web and cloud applications.

Pricing and Availability

NetScaler 10 software is supported by NetScaler MPX hardware appliances, NetScaler VPX virtual appliances, and NetScaler SDX virtualized multi-tenant appliance platforms. NetScaler 10 software is available today, with list prices starting at $2000. The new software release is available at no additional charge for existing Citrix NetScaler customers with a valid NetScaler maintenance agreement. Citrix TriScale clustering capabilities are currently offered in controlled availability. Citrix TriScale clustering upgrade licenses will be available for purchase later in Q2 2012.