As organizations rapidly move forward with digital and cloud transformation, the most reliable indicators of the success of any solution involve the experiences of employees and customers. Positive experiences happen when performance and security come together. You could choose one over the other, but, in the long run, your business demands both.

It doesn’t matter where or how you deliver the applications and services. The question you should strive to answer is, “How will I ensure the experience and performance my users demand and the security the business needs?” You must master both.

The way forward is with a solid application network framework, from the data center to the WAN edge, and through the cloud (or clouds). Your framework must be grounded in solutions with a proven track record, proven scalability, and proven integration for visibility and analytics. Citrix’s networking solutions can help you deliver apps with performance and security.

Performance

Let’s start with performance. Yes, it’s a term you hear from almost every vendor in the market. But at Citrix, we don’t just use the word, we live it.

Application delivery technologies such as load balancing, SSL offload, WAN, SaaS, and web optimization form the foundation for performance. These technologies must work together smoothly to enable IT to deliver a great employee experience from your apps and workloads, whether they’re on premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. Integration of these distributed technologies is what sets Citrix networking solutions apart, enabling a great experience and IT visibility into that experience.

Take, for example, a company that has begun to move its apps and workload portfolio to SaaS services, as well as its cloud-hosted solutions. To achieve the best performance and cost containment, it has implemented Citrix SD-WAN. This provides optimized performance for more than 4,000 SaaS applications, as well as the company’s new cloud-hosted solutions and its on-prem data center.

Not only is the company optimizing performance using the packet-level quality of service policies, but it’s also saving money by using less expensive internet-grade connections and cellular connections to achieve better performance.

The company can capitalize on another part of the Citrix integrated solution by deploying Citrix ADC to balance the workloads. It does this both from a traditional application methodology and a new, cloud-native methodology leveraging Kubernetes and containers. Deploying Citrix ADC in conjunction with Citrix Intelligent Traffic Management enables you to select the best performing points of presence and server or service to deliver apps and ensure a high quality experience. This service could very well be Citrix Workspace, in addition to other web and traditional applications. Using the full integrated solution delivers the optimized performance you and your users deserve.

Security

You have to protect critical assets at remote sites, as well as users and the applications that are crucial to them. Integrated security solutions for Citrix SD-WAN are already built in to the product, like our stateful firewall.

Extended security with Palo Alto and ZScaler brings integration to infrastructure you might already own. Citrix ADC provides the application security for the apps you deliver, starting with a foundational Web App Firewall. But new security vectors that affect applications center around bots and a growing reliance on APIs. Disruption of services through bots is an escalating cybersecurity issue. Citrix Bot Management protects the application without impacting performance.

And with API Gateway in Citrix ADC, you get the protection you need for your existing and next-generation applications. APIs between systems and between applications are default mechanisms for sharing information and improving application reliability and performance. APIs are now the entry point into many of your services and applications. Protection of this access is just as important as securing access from the internet and from your users.

Visibility into Performance and Security

All these integration points across the Citrix portfolio report home to a central management and analytics solution, providing visibility into both performance and security. With Citrix Application Delivery Management, you can provide the performance and security your users, customers, and business demand. This central system is your one-stop shop for all your management and visibility requirements, providing insights into how to address issues found with your systems.

Learn more about Citrix’s networking solutions and how they can enable the performance and security your digital transformation needs.