At the Velocity conference, Citrix Systems announced a strategic investment in Cotendo, a leading provider of innovative content delivery network (CDN) mobile content acceleration and optimization services.  This investment will drive further innovation in delivering mobile applications to any device, anywhere in the world. As part of the partnership, Cotendo will use infrastructure Citrix NetScaler® cloud networking with Cotendo’s advanced delivery network to provide the hybrid, next-generation acceleration and optimization solutions today’s highly interactive and personalized mobile and web applications require. Citrix and Cotendo will break down the silos that exist today between traditional CDNs, advanced cloud-based acceleration services and on-premise application delivery infrastructure to ensure that end-users of modern mobile and web applications get the richest and most secure experience possible.

Mobile application use, and corresponding mobile traffic, is growing exponentially and is becoming a primary issue of concern for businesses of all types. Traditional CDN services, which were designed for static web content, do not provide the functionality necessary to accelerate the delivery of modern mobile and web applications. The simple ability to cache content at the edge is no longer enough to cost effectively serve the demands of today’s mobile application providers. Since modern mobile web applications make extensive use of personalization, customization and real-time updates, they generate frequent interactive communication all the way back to the datacenter, which is highly inefficient, costly and slow. Privacy concerns surrounding the highly personal content within these applications also increases the need for end-to-end security.

Cotendo’s CDN and cloud-based mobile and application acceleration services, combined with Citrix NetScaler cloud networking infrastructure running on-premise and in the cloud, reduce the latency and optimize the bandwidth of the CDN-to-datacenter network connection dramatically, while simultaneously securing all communications so that all data in transit is never compromised. The end result is far more efficient delivery for mobile app providers, and a significantly enhanced experience for end users who enjoy the ability to access mobile data more quickly, more easily and more securely.

Additional Details
Enterprise IT departments increasingly demand end-to-end solutions that will accelerate their applications, reduce latency, improve end-user experience and facilitate engagement between any location and any device. By aligning the application delivery optimization and acceleration technologies provided by Citrix and Cotendo, Cotendo will offer a new class of hybrid solutions for enterprise content delivery that blends hardware, content acceleration, and the cloud to raise the bar on application delivery over distributed networks by:

 

• Minimizing latency and accelerating application performance from 1.5 to 5X via TCP optimizations, data compression and data deduplication
• Reducing first and middle mile network bandwidth consumption by 50 to 99 percent via data compression and deduplication
• Provide a persistent, encrypted tunnel between the enterprise data center and the CDN edge to cut SSL processing requirements at both the CDN PoP and origin

Quotes

Lydia Leong, Research Vice President, Technology and Service Providers Group, Gartner
“Users now expect content and applications anytime, anywhere, on any device. Highly dynamic, highly personalized, multi-device applications present many new challenges to content owners and businesses, and require them to find new means to improve the user experience. Complex, multi-data center deployments, including hybrid cloud deployments, increase the technical challenges involved. Fully optimizing the delivery of these applications requires deep integration between hardware, software, and service solutions, including the organization’s on-premise infrastructure as well as remote and in-the-cloud infrastructure.”

Klaus Oestermann, Group Vice President and General Manager, Networking and Cloud Product Group
“The insatiable desire for mobile apps is putting new demands on the enterprise datacenter.  Technology created years ago to support the static nature of the web cannot support today’s demands for dynamic data.  Cotendo already has proven itself as a leader in providing acceleration services that go beyond simple edge caching to provide highly dynamic, highly interactive mobile and web app services.  By pairing Citrix NetScaler cloud networking infrastructure with Cotendo cloud-based services, we are giving the industry the unique hybrid solution it needs.  We are committed to further growing this partnership with focused NetScaler engineering projects based on continued customer feedback.”

Ronni Zehavi, CEO, Cotendo
“Cotendo is the innovation leader in accelerating sophisticated content and applications over the internet and from the cloud in any way the content is consumed – over wired or wireless networks and to all device types. This powerful combination of Citrix NetScaler cloud networking technology with our PoPs technology will address one of the most pressing needs of enterprise customers for acceleration of personalized, customized content, and will produce significant new business opportunities for our two companies.”

Solution Availability
The first solutions based on the NetScaler cloud networking infrastructure and Cotendo acceleration and optimization services will be available in the second half of 2011.