Prepress
New Citrix NetScaler Web 2.0 Push Technology Reduces Cost of Delivering Interactive Web Applications
Wednesday 15. April 2009 - New NetScaler Technology Speeds Applications that Push Data to Users, Achieving Greater Real-time Interactivity with Fewer Servers Required
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today unveiled the industrys first Web 2.0 Push technology as an integrated feature of its popular Citrix NetScaler product line. This groundbreaking new capability was specifically designed to address the demands that todays interactive Web 2.0 applications are placing on server infrastructures. While Web 2.0 applications are ushering in a new era of enhanced functionality and responsiveness for end users, they are highly inefficient when it comes to server computing resources. In order to create a rich interactive experience, Web 2.0 applications need to maintain a one-to-one user connection to backend servers for extended periods, which severely taxes datacenter resources and adversely impacts performance and scalability. NetScaler is the first application delivery controller to streamline this process by “pushing” data directly to thousands of users concurrently, offloading web servers from this burdensome task. As a result, server costs for delivering Web 2.0 applications can be reduced by five to ten times.
In todays busy world, end users are increasingly making use of interactive Web 2.0 technologies that allow them to stay on top of personal and business activities by pushing relevant information and updates to them automatically. Online banking customers, for example, can elect to have financial information, such as deposits, trade settlement or withdrawals, automatically sent to any device of their choice. Other web-facing applications making heavy use of push technology include video and news feeds to cell phone subscribers, monitoring consoles for electric grids, multi-player games, chat-like sales and support for self-service applications, and technology mash-ups. Even enterprise applications are now benefiting from up-to-the-minute feeds from data warehouses, and business intelligence and analytics tools.
Powering these applications is an expensive proposition for service providers, often requiring them to purchase racks of new servers to support even moderate numbers of application users. With its new Web 2.0 Push technology, NetScaler can now transmit this data to application users directly from the NetScaler systems deployed in front of the datacenter, relieving the backend server infrastructure from having to manage tens or hundreds of thousands of individual connections.
“AOL is investing in Web 2.0 server infrastructure, including support for server push techniques on our Citrix NetScaler MPX systems,” said Jacob Rosenberg, senior technical director, AOL. “Application delivery controllers like NetScaler play a key role in reducing the cost of AOLs infrastructure and significantly improving server utilization.”
Rich Web Experience at a Fraction of the Cost
A distinguishing characteristic of the new NetScaler Web 2.0 Push technology is its ability to enable “publish-and-subscribe” semantics and support the proactive push of data from the server to the client. This approach can be used to deliver continuous streams of new or updated information, creating the illusion of real-time interaction. The result is a highly dynamic user interface that is considerably more responsive than would otherwise be possible.
“Citrix is furthering the market with this technology,” says Lucinda Borovick, director, datacenter networks at IDC. “NetScaler Web 2.0 Push is showing how Citrix is bringing value and innovation by supporting additional application traffic patterns ahead of its competitors.”
These new capabilities allow NetScaler to free up backend servers from inefficient connection management tasks, thus shrinking the number of servers needed. This reduced server footprint in the datacenter improves server utilization and allows a smaller set of servers to accomplish the same business tasks, cutting server costs by up to 90 percent by decreasing power, cooling and operational overhead (1).
“Adding this capability to NetScaler was the result of listening to concerns from customers about the growing server sprawl issues they are facing as Web 2.0 applications grow in popularity,” said Klaus Oestermann, group vice president and general manager, NetScaler Product Group at Citrix. “As a result of these conversations, we have put a unique focus on Web 2.0 optimization in our NetScaler research and development labs, and as one of the first results, we have now created a technology that hits at the core of this problem. NetScaler now reduces overall Web 2.0 TCO by up to 90 percent and server capacity needed for Web 2.0 application by up to 10 times, while at the same time acting as the only application delivery controller to support proactive push capabilities. The feedback from our customers has been extremely positive.”
Pricing and Availability
The Web 2.0 Push technology is available immediately in Enterprise and Platinum editions of NetScaler. Existing NetScaler customers are eligible for a free upgrade to include the Web 2.0 Push technology.