By now you’ve read about Citrix’s acquisition of EMS-Cortex and you might already have heard of a Cloud Control Panel. In fact, you might already be using one. With all the buzz around control panels, it’s a good idea to get everyone on the same page. In early April we’ll be diving deeper into this topic during the Controlling the Cloud—Introducing Cortex Cloud Control Panel from Citrix webinar on April 6^th. In the mean time, let’s get you up to speed. First off, what’s a control panel?

A Cloud Control Panel is software that allows hosting providers to easily provision and manage adds, moves and changes to applications and desktops to the endpoint device. User self-provisioning and delegated provisioning to business IT personnel is an important element of service providers hosting applications and desktops off-premise. Cloud Control Panel simplifies cloud service management by providing a single, all-in-one interface for delivering hosted apps, desktops and services. It enables service providers to set up new tenants in minutes, scale efficiently via automation and dramatically reduce provisioning times. It fills a fundamental need in the cloud hosting market for a simple, consolidated management view across all services.

As a service provider you have one sure bet – your subscribers are at the end of a wide area network (WAN). Last year’s launch of the Citrix Branch Repeater VPX, a software-based WAN optimization and acceleration virtual appliance, brought high definition desktop and application experiences to thousands of branch office workers worldwide and they are ‘loving it’. That’s because in the world of desktop virtualization, user experience is everything. Now Citrix is making it easier than ever for Citrix Service Providers to deliver faster desktop and app performance and responsiveness to their subscribers, reduce bandwidth costs and simplify and lower the TCO of network infrastructure.

Effective immediately Citrix Service Providers can deploy Branch Repeater VPX-45 instances at no additional cost to support their Premium subscribers. Any Citrix Service Provider upgrading from Base to Premium will also get access to Branch Repeater VPX functionality at no additional cost. Citrix Service Providers may continue to deploy instances of Branch Repeater independent of Premium subscriber support and report usage on a per instance basis.

Keep reading to learn how to take advantage of this new offering .

Growth, Mobility and Security. Maybe this sounds counter-intuitive. After all, isn't the promise of the cloud "cheap" IT? For large enterprises, storage and server capacity are huge concerns as the price of these critical datacenter resources continue to rise. And many enterprises are looking at ways in which to leverage Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers to deal with this. IaaS companies like Amazon provide virtual machine images, CPU and storage for pennies an hour. Their business is growing and many companies are taking advantage of this off-premise approach to IT subsidy. But the Cloud is much, much more than IaaS. Small and Mid-sized companies are looking for someone to provide services that include their critical applications and service providers previously known as MSPs are stepping up to meet the challenge.

Xcentric is a hosting provider focused on the Certified Public Accounting (CPA) industry. Xcentric provides a turnkey solution for CPA firms that includes industry application access and updates, storage, websites, back-end infrastructure, and more. You could say we make IT disappear for CPA firms.

In order to deliver this solution, Xcentric is heavily vested in Microsoft and Citrix technologies including Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenServer, Citrix Provisioning Server, Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, etc. Gluing all these components together in a multi-tenant environment can be tricky. It is of vital importance to consistently provision resources in order to maintain stability, usability and security. This is why Xcentric chose Cortex Cloud Control Panel from Citrix as a provisioning engine. Cortex Control Panel supports the Microsoft and Citrix components in our hosting infrastructure and ensures that resources are provisioned the correct way every time. Cortex also allows us to extend provisioning capability to our clients. Clients no longer have to submit requests to create, delete or update a user or to add services and applications for users. Now, the client simply launches a web-based portal and self-provisions users, services, and applications on demand.

Cortex Cloud Control Panel from Citrix has been a key component for Xcentric’s Cloud environment. By providing provisioning automation, Cortex has allowed Xcentric to consistently provision resources and eliminate human error as well as provide a greater degree of client empowerment. Cortex takes care of mundane tasks so that Xcentric can focus on building better client solutions.

Jason Conger, Director of Technology at Xcentric

As a Citrix Service Provider and Cloud Aggregator, ChannelCloud offers its channel partners a comprehensive education program and end-to-end, multi-tenant Cloud solution to assure MSPs not only survive but rather, thrive in becoming Cloud Integrators. 

One key to ChannelCloud’s success is its Automation Platform and Control Panel which serves to support the ever-changing demands of clients while increasing profits to its partners.  Virtual Hosted Desktops are delivered via this Automation Platform in a highly scalable and cost effective manner. In addition to offering standard Remote Desktop Services, ChannelCloud’s CEO and President Kent Erickson says the platform was designed to be able to offer partners the option of upgrading their clients to the recommended Citrix XenApp Platinum Hosted Shared Desktop. ChannelCloud promotes XenApp Platinum as it improves functionality and enhances the end user experience.

In addition, ChannelCloud goes above and beyond the technology and focuses on providing the channel with the knowledge, tools, and training (via a 2.5 day training course) to become successful Cloud Integrators. According to Erickson, “Becoming a ChannelCloud partner and ultimately utilizing the Platform and Control Panel, partners can efficiently gain sizable business advantages in the marketplace and incorporate Cloud solutions into their business models.” ChannelCloud has seen success with their program in helping MSPs make this transition in both the US and in the UK-visit www.channelcloud.com to learn more.

Members of the new Cloud App Delivery team are out on the road this month, attending some key industry events and talking about the Citrix Service Provider Program. The month got started at Hostapaloooza up in Toronto. Hostapaloooza is a live, in-person IT event, sponsored by Microsoft Hosting University, and focused on helping mid-market web hosters activate new customers.

Next up is World Hosting Days at Eurpoa-Park in Germany, on March 22-25. Citrix is excited to be a sponsor at World Hosting Days—the largest worldwide hosting event with a projected attendance of over 2,800 people. If you will be at World Hosting Days don’t miss Citrix’s breakout session—The Next Step in Hosting Services Evolution – Desktop as a Service.

Immediately after comes Microsoft Hosting Summit in Bellevue, WA, on March 29-31. Microsoft Hosting Summit is an unmatched event for the hosting community to network and share ideas on building and expanding hosting businesses. If you’re going to Hosting Summit 2011 let us know! We are booking our calendar full of on-site partner meetings, to talk one on one about the CSP program and how partners can be successful.

In February, Citrix announced the acquisition of EMS-Cortex, a leader in cloud services management software used by over 120 Telcos and service providers around the world to deliver services to subscribers. The Cortex team brings with them more than a decade of SaaS technology experience that enables service providers and their subscribers to set up, provision and maintain a wide variety of hosted services from a single, easy-to-use, automated interface called a “control panel.”

In this month’s webinar, Citrix Service Provider partners will be introduced to the Cortex Cloud Control Panel from Citrix and learn its benefits and how it will fit into your hosting business.

• Explore the business needs that control panels solve and the benefits it provides
• Understand how Cortex Cloud Control Panel fits into the Citrix Service Provider Program
• See a live demo of Cortex Cloud Control Panel from Citrix
• Learn how it is sold, supported and how usage is reported

Mark your calendars for April 6^th and get in the know on cloud control! Mike McFarland, Director of Product Marketing and Daniel Thurston, Sales Manager, both from the Cloud App Delivery Group will be leading what is sure to be a lively business and technical webinar!

Register: Wednesday, April 6, 2011, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST

Citrix Branch Repeater is a branch optimization solution that provides a high-definition desktop and application experience to branch and mobile users while dramatically reducing bandwidth costs and simplifying branch infrastructure. Branch Repeater accelerates desktop and application delivery, decreases bandwidth consumption, and enables server consolidation.

As a Citrix Service Provider, all of your subscribers are by default in a branch or remote location, so delivering the best hosted app and desktop experience is paramount for success. Now that Citrix has made it easier than ever (free!) for Citrix Services Providers to deliver faster desktop and app performance, you won’t want to miss out on how to do it. As part of the ongoing CSP Reference Architecture series, this webinar will explain how to service providers can enable secure branch office and end-point acceleration over public network connections. 

• Why do we need WAN optimization?
• Where and how Repeater fits into the service provider architecture
• Learn how it is sold, supported and reported

Join Steve Schall, Sr. Product Manager for Citrix Repeater and Kurt Moody, Solutions Architect for the Citrix Cloud App Delivery Group to learn how Citrix Repeater can be used in a multi-tenant solution for thousands of users across multiple subscribers.

Register: Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST

Citrix Summit and Synergy 2011 bring together companies from the global Citrix ecosystem for intensive education and networking that can make a real difference for your business. This year we have more than doubled the number of breakout sessions and exhibit hall booths dedicated to the Citrix Service Provider Program. At Summit, there are four must attend sessions for service providers and hosters:

• Build a successful, profitable business as a Citrix Service Provider (SUM106)
• Reference architecture and design principles for large-scale hosting and cloud infrastructures plus a peek at the future (SUM205)
• Deliver managed hosted desktops as a service (SUM114)
• Desktop virtualization in the cloud – new opportunities and solutions for partners (SUM132)

Held May 23–24, 2011, this year’s Summit agenda includes in-depth technical sessions, hands-on training and market strategies on how to succeed in a competitive landscape. You’ll examine the most effective sales messages, hear about real-life customer success stories, get the tools you need to grow your business and learn practical tips and techniques for getting the most out of your Citrix partnership.

 Your Summit registration includes admittance to Citrix Synergy, where you can join your customers for an extended three-day conference on May 25-27, 2011. At Synergy, be sure to mark your agenda to attend two more key sessions:

• Host apps and desktops in the cloud: considerations for enterprise IT leveraging service providers (SYN316)
• Get your head in the cloud—How to manage the enterprise like a cloud service provider (SYN347)

 Learn more about Summit and Synergy 2011.

At a recent industry event in Las Vegas, one of the main questions Citrix posed to service providers was "Do you provide any SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings?" The predominant answer we heard was, "Yeah, we provide web hosting." The narrowness of the understood definition of SaaS was quite eye-opening. Was it true that some of the largest and most strategic service providers from around the globe understood SaaS as web-apps built on Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions?

Web-apps represent a small portion of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Windows apps that businesses want to move into the cloud. Sure organizations can re-write legacy applications on emerging PaaS platforms such as Windows Azure, but that will take years and significant investments. Everyone wants to get into the cloud now. Moving applications to the cloud allows companies to tackle IT at a more strategic level, offloading all their IT, not just hardware and hosting environments delivered by IaaS. Guess what? This can be done right now!

Keep reading to find out how.

Industry Analysts predict an increasing demand for Cloud Computing services in 2011. But most of the press is around the large enterprise. This segment of the market surely has a need for services from some of the large Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) companies. But what about the Small and Medium sized companies around the world that have neither the time nor the inclination to sort through the technology to make the Cloud work for them? They have two questions. "How can I get my applications cheaper?" and "Where is my data and is it secure?”

Citrix solved for the first question twenty years ago and many Citrix Service Providers provide both Applications-as-a-Service and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) to thousands of SMBs today. The word is getting out and more SMBs are signing up every day for these services. Providing services for applications and desktops are one thing, but what about the actual data? It's no secret that many SMBs are using services today like Mozy, Dropbox and Carbonite to back up their data, but is that really the best way to secure the information critical to your organization? Well it might be... and then again it might not. Using third party off-premise storage is definitely one of the many ways in which to secure your data. But pushing your data off-site does not make a Disaster Recovery plan. And many SMBs don't know that when a catastrophic data event comes (and it will) more than 80% of the companies never recover.