SoftLayer Partners with Citrix for Advanced Virtualization and Cloud Computing Solutions

SoftLayer, a leader in next-generation web hosting and on-demand data center services, has announced today that they will use and offer the new Citrix Cloud Center™ (C3) solution from Citrix Systems, Inc. as a key part of their cloud computing strategy. SoftLayer’s implementation of Citrix C3 will leverage SoftLayer’s leading automation capabilities and further the company’s vision for utilizing virtualization to transform the data center industry. The first component of the Citrix C3 product family adopted by SoftLayer will be Citrix® XenServer™ Cloud Edition.

“Partnering with Citrix was an easy decision. It’s clear they are listening to enterprises and cloud service providers—these solutions meet and exceed the needs of this rapidly-evolving IT segment,” said Nathan Day, Softlayer Chief Technology Officer. “The flexibility and scalability of Citrix XenServer allows us to deliver advanced virtualization today. And the full Citrix C3 solution will allow us to deliver the cloud computing of tomorrow.”

The Citrix C3 product family provides a complete set of service delivery infrastructure building blocks for cloud computing. Citrix’s already successful Citrix Delivery Center™ product family is used by more than 215,000 enterprises and 99 percent of the Fortune 500 worldwide to transform corporate data centers into dynamic “delivery centers,” providing applications and desktops as a cloud-like service to their end users. The new Citrix C3 product family extends those same capabilities to cloud providers. Its dynamic reference architecture combines the power of each individual product to create a secure, highly available, unified service delivery infrastructure.

Citrix XenServer, a key component of both Citrix Delivery Center and Citrix C3, is a powerful, open, easy-to-use server virtualization solution that allows customers to create truly virtual data center environments. XenServer is powered by the popular Xen® hypervisor—which operates directly on top of a physical server’s bare metal hardware and enables multiple virtual servers to be created and operated on the single physical machine. XenServer includes an industry-leading, easy-to-use management console that can provision and manage any number of physical and virtual machines across a distributed data center environment. These advanced capabilities provide unprecedented opportunities for:

	Increased agility and cost effectiveness through server consolidation—with less physical infrastructure, XenServer decreases capital expenditures.
	Simplified deployment and integration—by provisioning machines directly on top of the physical hardware, XenServer does not require a single, dedicated-host operating system.
	Higher security and reliability—through virtual firewalls and multiple data backup options, XenServer offers a best-in-class solution for running mission critical operations.
	Increased storage and clustering scalability—with simplified and accelerated deployment of virtual machines, XenServer lets administrators add or eliminate servers practically at will.

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