Citrix Systems Adds Web 2.0 Push Technology To Its NetScaler Product Line

Citrix Systems, Inc. has added Web 2.0 Push technology to its Citrix NetScaler product line. This capability was added to address the demands that interactive Web 2.0 applications place on server infrastructures. Citrix Systems (News - Alert) provides application delivery infrastructure to more than 215,000 organizations throughout the world.

 

Web 2.0 applications need to maintain a one-to-one user connection to backend servers for extended periods in order to create a rich interactive experience. This takes a toll on datacenter resources and in turn adversely impacts performance and scalability. NetScaler streamlines this process by “pushing” data directly to users concurrently. Thus web servers are exempted from this task, which reduces server costs for delivering Web 2.0 applications by five to ten times.

 

End users have started making use of interactive Web 2.0 technologies to push relevant information and updates to them automatically. Applications such as 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 also make use of push technology. The new Web 2.0 push technology will allow NetScaler to transmit data to application users directly from the NetScaler systems deployed in front of the datacenter.

 

The new NetScaler Web 2.0 Push technology is able to “publish-and-subscribe” semantics. It also supports the proactive push of data from the server to the client. This enables continuous delivery of streams of new or updated information which helps to create the illusion of real-time interaction. The Web 2.0 Push technology is available immediately in the Enterprise and Platinum editions of NetScaler. A free upgrade to include the Web 2.0 Push technology will be provided to existing NetScaler customers.

 

The Web 2.0 Push technology feature will allow NetScaler to free up backend servers from inefficient connection management tasks which reduces the number of servers required. This in turn improves server utilization and allows a smaller number of servers to accomplish the same business tasks. Thus server costs get cut by up to 90 percent by decreasing power, cooling and operational overhead.

 

According to Klaus Oestermann, group vice president and general manager of NetScaler Product Group at Citrix, concerns about the growing server sprawl issues from customers resulted in the addition of Web 2.0 push capability to NetScaler. NetScaler 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. It also acts as the only application delivery controller to support proactive push capabilities.