Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

  1. Home
  2. Cloud-infrastructure
  3. Citrix-cto-demanding-clarity-cloud-vendors
  4. Page
  5. Citrix CTO On Demanding Clarity From Cloud Vendors: Page 3 of 5
Cloud Infrastructure

Citrix CTO On Demanding Clarity From Cloud Vendors: Page 3 of 5

Citrix Systems CTO Simon Crosby sat down with Andrew Conry Murray at Interop 2011 for a candid question-and-answer session on a variety of subjects, including emerging cloud power centers--Citrix is a major player in some. The company is also pushing emerging standards on a variety of fronts, including cloud computing and application performance. Crosby talked about the company's goals for these efforts. He also advised IT to demand more vendor clarity about the cloud.
Andrew Conry-Murray
May 11, 2011

Crosby: Our goal is to have the core components of networking services built into OpenStack. For instance, elastic load balancing should be in there. At every layer of the stack in OpenStack you should have APIs where you can add in value at that layer if you want, like NetScaler. We are working closely with Cisco there. Cisco has come on board and been a real ally.

Not long ago, people thought Cisco was in bed with VMware. We see customers building out cloud for [infrastructure as a service] using [the Unified Computing System]. So Cisco has turned into an active community member in OpenStack and the Open Networking Foundation, around the open virtual switch.

Conry Murray: Citrix announced a new standards effort, AppFlow, which aims to provide more information about application performance. Can you talk about the motivation behind AppFlow and its objectives? Are you going to bring AppFlow to a standards body?

Crosby: That's the aspiration. We want it to be entirely open and bring the industry to it. We think it delivers new insights that are of value in the cloud world. Traditionally, the metrics you get from cloud instrumentation have been of a low level. You can now provide instrumentation at the layer of the app. You can get more fluent in terms of what's going on inside the app, and then inform tools how to scale and what to scale.

Conry Murray: What standards body would you like to see take it up?

Tags:

Commentary
Cloud Infrastructure