Stories about: Citrix Systems

Whether you call them application delivery controllers, application accelerators, application traffic managers, or just load balancers, the solutions for scaling out Web sites and improving the performance of Web applications have come a long way from their humble beginnings. The result is a great deal of choice in the marketplace, from bare-bones appliances with basic functionality to high-capacity switch-based systems that handle Web traffic in wildly sophisticated ways.

When it comes to online data theft, credit card numbers and bank account data are so 2007.

Red Hat is beefing up its virtualization strategy with a new embeddable hypervisor and management console, it announced Wednesday at the Red Hat Summit conference in Boston.

A tech-support call starts it all. Why is my application running slow? What happened to my spreadsheet data? Is HQ using a 56K modem to handle traffic for my branch office -- again? The number of calls suddenly increases, and network analysis reveals unforeseen usage spikes at a new marketing location. The dream of data-center consolidation turns into a nightmare.

Tools for speeding sluggish applications traditionally are of two types: application-delivery controllers designed to ease the load on Web servers, and WAN optimization devices aimed at mitigating network latency and bandwidth constraints. Some say it's time for these two to consolidate.

When Rich De Brino agreed to let a start-up come on-site and demonstrate how its technology could optimize video applications by aggregating multiple network connections, he didn't make it easy on the vendor.

Symantec's storage arm, Veritas, announced Tuesday that it has combined its online storage management software with Citrix Systems Xen Hypervisor to develop an x86 server virtualization platform. The product is expected to be available this fall, according to Aaron Aubrecht, senior director of product management and engineering for Veritas' Storage Foundation group.

About 15 miles from its medical center in downtown San Antonio, Christus Health is building a US$23 million data center to house a flood of digital information ranging from patient insurance records to CT scans.

Hoping to stay a step ahead of rival VMware, Citrix Systems is now shipping its XenDesktop product line of desktop virtualization software.

Everyone knows that server virtualization shaves hardware clutter in the datacenter, boosts workloads, brings disaster recovery flexibility, slashes costs and basically saves the planet from nasty carbon emissions. But here's the dirty little secret: Many pitfalls await server virtualization adopters, and a stumble can ruin all your virtual dreams.

If you're waiting to see market-leading Linux vendor Red Hat release a desktop Linux operating system anytime soon to compete in the consumer market, then think again.