Citrix-Amazon partnership to provide cloud computing ‘sandbox'

Citrix is partnering with Amazon in an effort to entice corporations to trial -- and potentially migrate to -- cloud computing.

Called the Citrix C3 Lab, the newly launched service gives users access to Citrix's cloud computing products in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment.

The service runs on a set of virtual machines within Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and is offered to customers with AWS accounts at no additional charge.

Designed to allow IT professionals to test application compatibility and application staging in the cloud, the service combines Amazon's EC2 and Simple Storage Service with Citrix's Access Gateway and Repeater products, as well as its new Windows application delivery system, XenApp.

Lab users also will have access to ‘Blueprints', which outline common scenarios, deployment guides and best practices for cloud environments.

According to Citrix's senior vice president and the chief marketing officer, Wes Wasson, Citrix C3 Lab targets the company's 230,000 customers who ‘may be thinking about the cloud, but find it too complicated to implement'.

"We're giving corporate customers a sandbox to play in," Wasson said. "We want to make it zero risk for customers."

"We've done a lot of things in the past six months to lower [entry] costs for customers," he told iTnews.

"It's probably 15 per cent because of the economic climate, but it's also 85 per cent because we believe in the potential of this technology."

Wasson explained that Citrix's growing interest in cloud computing has grown naturally from its background in virtualisation.

He noted that cloud computing currently is a nascent technology that hasn't yet been clearly defined by the industry: "I think it's going to take a year and a half or so before the industry defines what is and isn't cloud computing."

Citrix characterises cloud computing by its ability to offer flexible, automated, low-cost datacentre services, and a pay-as-you-go business model.

"We're very excited about the cloud; this train is coming," Wasson said.

"Our vision as a company is that if you could take the economics and flexibility of the cloud into the datacentre, we could change the way that people do business.