NetScaler: The power of one

One platform for modern application delivery across the enterprise

Today Citrix announced the launch of new subscription plans designed to help enterprises consolidate their application delivery infrastructure through the new Citrix platform. All NetScaler capabilities are included in the Citrix platform, and the new subscription options will make it cost effective to extend NetScaler application delivery and security to hybrid- and multi-cloud deployments enterprise-wide, further reducing spend and operational complexity by eliminating the need for point solutions.

NetScaler now comes included in your Citrix subscription

NetScaler was first in the industry to introduce application delivery controllers (ADCs) that allowed for migration of throughput capacity across environments — either from on-premises to cloud or from physical ADC appliances to virtualized ADC instances — giving you unmatched flexibility to reallocate your already-purchased NetScaler ADCs as needed. Today we are going a step further by including NetScaler in your Citrix subscription: Not only can you now use NetScaler for your Citrix deployments with the convenience of a single subscription, but you can also use NetScaler across your enterprise for all your application delivery and security needs.

For its enterprise customers, Citrix is introducing two new subscription plans:

• Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud License
• Citrix Platform License

NetScaler software will be included in both subscription plans and will include all premium features and capabilities on all of the NetScaler physical, virtual, and containerized form factors.

NetScaler softwares instances and throughput capacity

Both subscription plans include unlimited instances of any NetScaler form factor type:

• NetScaler MPX is an ADC for hardware-based single-tenant application deployments that provides L4-L7 traffic management, comes with an integrated WAF, performs SSL offloading, and is FIPS compliant.
• NetScaler SDX is an ADC for hardware-based multi-tenant application deployments that provides full resource isolation for each ADC instance, including SSL, bandwidth, and compression. It is FIPS compliant.
• NetScaler VPX is a virtual ADC that provides capabilities typically offered only on specialized, high-end network devices. Deploy NetScaler VPX on your preferred hypervisor and achieve high SSL performance with no hardware acceleration.
• NetScaler CPX is a container-based ADC that provides load balancing and traffic management for your containerized applications. You can deploy one or more NetScaler CPXs as standalone instances on a Docker host.
• NetScaler BLX for bare metal runs as a Linux process on your hardware of choice. Because NetScaler BLX is a lightweight software package with no hypervisor or container overhead, you get extraordinarily fast performance. And there’s no additional cost for hypervisor software.

Throughput capacity is how you unlock the processing power of a NetScaler instance:

• The Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud License includes 1,000 Gbps of throughput capacity  — enough to meet the needs of most small to medium-size enterprises
• The Citrix Platform License provides unlimited throughput capacity to satisfy the requirements of the largest global enterprises

NetScaler hardware

You now have the flexibility to buy NetScaler hardware appliances independently of NetScaler software so that you can align hardware procurement cycles with your project needs and timelines. NetScaler hardware appliances are competitively priced and come with lifetime standard RMA (hardware support) included.

NetScaler delivers unrivaled value among enterprise ADCs

NetScaler is an application delivery and security solution that accelerates modern application delivery, easing the burden on overworked networking and IT infrastructure teams. We are continuing to build on decades of evolving our innovative software-based architecture. Our aim is to provide ADC feature parity across environments to help you simplify your application delivery while achieving the best performance of any ADC in the industry. This focus is a rallying cry for the NetScaler product and engineering teams that are invested in your success  —  what we call the power of one:

• One management plane called NetScaler Console gives you the convenience of a single place to orchestrate, observe, and analyze any type of application type and deployment architecture.
• One code base with a uniform set of APIs allows you to provision and manage multiple different form factors, which provides operational consistency for the life-cycle management of your ADC infrastructure and ensures a consistent security posture.
• One-pass architecture, available only from NetScaler, processes security and other ADC functions in a single pass to reduce latency for super-fast application performance.

New NetScaler innovations for modern application delivery

To support their business growth, enterprises are modernizing their applications, and they need a simpler way to manage complex application delivery and security across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. We know that whether you are seeking to modernize your traditional applications or choosing microservices for new application deployments, your objective is to deliver more value to your customers faster than ever before, without compromising on security. NetScaler has many new innovations that will help you get your products and services to market faster. Some will be coming in the weeks and months ahead, and some are available today:

• Hardened security for faster deployment: NetScaler comes with enterprise-grade security that just works — including an advanced web application firewall (WAF) and API protection — saving you time and eliminating the uncertainty of using untested and unsupported open source solutions.
• Containerized ADC for faster and more secure application performance: NetScaler offers a fully automated proxy and ingress controller for Kubernetes environments at no additional cost. NetScaler CPX runs as a container within a Kubernetes cluster and converts any microservices-based application’s ingress definitions into NetScaler ADC configurations.Today we are introducing CPX Express, a free, developer-centric NetScaler ADC for Kubernetes that has full feature parity with our enterprise version and is supported through the NetScaler Community.
• Application-centric API for faster ADC configuration: You don’t need to be a networking expert to use NetScaler because our latest declarative API enhancement automates the configuration of NetScaler ADCs for you, freeing you to focus on your IT priorities.
• End-to-end observability for faster troubleshooting: NetScaler goes beyond simple monitoring to not only alert you that something is wrong but to also tell you exactly whether the issue is in the client, the server, or the internet connection in between so you can fix it faster. NetScaler Console provides sample dashboards for popular observability endpoints such as Splunk and Grafana, so you can share rich application and security insights with your application and security teams.

We are just getting started, and we hope you’ll join us

While today is a major milestone for Citrix and NetScaler, in many respects this is just the beginning. As the underlying technology that provides high-performance application delivery and comprehensive security for applications and APIs as well as secure access to workplace applications, NetScaler will continue to evolve its capabilities as part of the Citrix platform.

And with NetScaler now included in Citrix subscriptions, you — our customers and partners — will be able to realize the full value of NetScaler for securely delivering any application in any environment. As a key component of the Citrix platform, NetScaler will allow Citrix customers to consolidate all of their application delivery and security needs across the enterprise.

In the coming weeks, we will share additional details about our customer-centric innovations that will earn NetScaler its place as the most widely deployed enterprise ADC.

If you are not already part of our journey, we encourage you to:

• Read the NetScaler data sheet
• Join the NetScaler Community
• Get free NetScaler training and certifications (included in your subscription)

Author Sunit Chauhan is the head of product for NetScaler.