Last November, Citrix introduced a paradigm-shifting advancement in application delivery with the first intent-based app delivery and security service. Citrix App Delivery and Security Service consists of two SaaS offerings — Self Managed and Citrix Managed. Self Managed enables IT admins to choose to monitor the complete health and security of an environment themselves. With Citrix Managed, Citrix manages all app delivery automatically, using an organization’s stated intent and business policies.

Today, we are pleased to announce general availability of the Self Managed offering, giving organizations a highly flexible SaaS option that enables them to add new Citrix ADC instances anywhere — on-premises and in public and private clouds. The offering combines our industry-leading pooled licensing, deep traffic analytics, robust security, and even a free trial of the Citrix Managed offering and consists of:

  • Automated capacity management and pooled licensing across hybrid multi-cloud, using the Citrix Application Delivery Management (ADM) service.
  • Comprehensive, rich analytics on app health, performance, and security through full access to the capabilities of Citrix ADM service, including:
    • A centralized dashboard with app and resource usage and response time for all ADCs anywhere
    • An API gateway that protects services and servers from attack
    • Security event notifications and recommendations for Citrix Web App Firewall and the API gateway and configurable bot protection
    • Automatic updates to the advanced features of Citrix ADM service
  • A one-year trial of the Citrix Managed offering, with 100TB data processed — enough for most organizations.

Ideal for Automating Workflows and Expanding to Cloud

For existing Citrix ADC customers, our Self Managed solution provides an intuitive transition from pooled licensing. It automates license management while enabling expanded visibility and powerful security controls. It also provides a risk-free on-ramp to intent-based operations enabled by the Citrix Managed offering. With the Citrix Self Managed option, IT can:

  • Automate app operations
  • Migrate on-prem apps for cloud scale
  • Evaluate multi-cloud for higher availability and business continuity

For organizations new to Citrix ADC or new to the intent-based service, Self Managed can:

  • Reduce licensing costs and fragmentation
  • Provide a seamless transition to intent-based, continuously optimized app delivery
  • Enable small-to-medium sized businesses to adopt enterprise-class app delivery without complexity.

For these and similar projects, “Self Managed” is ready on Day 1 to help customers automate app delivery and extend apps to the cloud.

Let’s consider three common use cases that many organizations will encounter within their projects.

Instant Capacity Reallocation and Centralized License Management

Organizations that grow their applications organically often have a mix of on-premises hardware and software licenses. Citrix pooled licensing enables customers to migrate capacity between ADCs when and where needed, even across physical, virtual, and containerized form factors. The Self Managed offering automates licenses acquisition across hybrid and multi-cloud, allowing users to easily consolidate their licenses, migrate capacity between ADCs to get better utilization and granularity, and manage all their licenses centrally.

Actionable Visibility, Analytics, and Security

As organizations move critical apps to the cloud, they must maintain a strong security posture and become more proactive in improving app performance and availability. With Citrix Application Delivery Management service included in the Self Managed offering, users can easily configure Citrix Web App Firewall, bot management, and API gateway and use learnings from suspicious traffic to make policy and configuration recommendations. It can analyze user behavior such as excessive client connections, upload/download volume, transactions, and other parameters. It can also use statistical modeling to assess resource usage by app and response deviations, as well as detect cipher mismatch and SSL A+ ratings for each app. Users can centrally make proactive changes to security and performance policies for all ADCs, no matter where they are deployed.

A Risk-free On-Ramp to Intent-Based, Continuously Optimized App Delivery

The complexity of distributed apps across hybrid multi-cloud demands progressive automation in policy setting, configuration, and enforcement. But organizations are reluctant to try advanced automation in a production environment because they don’t know how the system will behave when stressed.

With the Self Managed option, users can try “intent-driven, automated operations” with a few cloud ADCs using the free trial of the Citrix Managed offering. Self Managed has the tools to transfer traffic gradually by setting up a GSLB and then using DNS to send requests to the Citrix Managed ADCs. The Self Managed offering has DNS built in and provides 8M DNS queries. Users can turn on internet-state awareness and see immediate improvements to performance and responsiveness. The organization can even extend the trial to multiple clouds and choose when to move from the trial to live production traffic, for which there is sufficient capacity. And all automated policies and configurations are visible centrally. With Self Managed, the transition to full automation can be much quicker and happen without disruption.

Learn More

The Citrix App Delivery and Security Service Self Managed offering is available now. Request a demo today to learn more about simplifying your application delivery and security and enhancing the results you can achieve today.