To cloud or not to cloud? That’s no longer the question. According to 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting, and Managed Services, 46 percent of enterprises have adopted public cloud, and 59 percent indicate the workloads running on public clouds are mission-critical (i.e., they play a key role in running the business). While that might not be your organization, one thing is certain: Applications are migrating out of legacy data centers and in a big way.

Whether we’re talking about financial management, EHR, SCADA, or even desktops, these are some of the key applications used by the workforce of today’s modern organizations. Cloud offers more simplicity, better economics, and the potential for an improved user experience. So as these apps move from the data center, the network must follow them to the cloud.

If you’ve decided to use Microsoft Azure as your IaaS or PaaS of choice, you’re probably wondering what the network can do to make life easier for your IT operations team? Well this is where we can help. Citrix SD-WAN helps automate your on-ramps to the cloud, deliver exceptional application experience, and provide comprehensive security.

First, Extend the Network to the Cloud

With Citrix SD-WAN, we enable you to connect your branches to Azure VNets with physical appliances on one end and virtual ones (VPX instances) on the other. All it takes is a few clicks from the Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator service. We call this capability Azure ZTD (zero-touch deployment). Once it’s set up, your network benefits from the following:

  • Traffic shaping on diverse, bonded commodity internet links
  • Selective packet replication (aka packet racing) for voice and video
  • Sub-second, non-disruptive link failover

Next, Add Some Apps (or Workloads, If You’d Prefer)

Ready to move your financial management, SCADA, or EHR to Azure? Citrix SD-WAN has bi-directional QoS and the ability to monitor not only latency, packet loss, and jitter but also congestion. We support 17 QoS classes so you can fine tune your network to prioritize those business-critical applications.

Running Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops or Citrix Managed Desktops on Azure? Because they use HDX (High Definition Experience), Citrix SD-WAN can discern the difference between real-time traffic such as voice and video and prioritize it — automatically — over a file upload or a print request. It can also ensure that keyboard and mouse inputs, critical for a good virtual app experience, are treated with high priority.

With Citrix Managed Desktops, things get even more interesting because the provisioning of a Citrix SD-WAN VPX virtual instance on Azure is integrated into the desktop service administrator workflow. By the way, the Citrix Managed Desktops integration will be available soon for Tech Preview!

Breakout to Office 365

Got Office 365? You may be looking at diverting traffic from the data center (if you even have one) to Microsoft’s SaaS cloud. As one of the first solutions to be accredited with the “Works with Office 365” certification, Citrix SD-WAN for Office 365 can direct such traffic to one of their 150 front doors. We built an API integration where we can dynamically connect branch users to the Office 365 SaaS cloud with minimal latency for an optimized experience. In fact, one of our customers, Malux, saw an 80 percent improvement in performance after implementing this capability.

Put It All Together for the Best of All Worlds

You may be either using or looking at Microsoft Teams as your collaboration platform and Citrix optimization for Microsoft Teams delivers the modern desktop for today’s mobile workforce. If this is the case, we have even better news. The recently introduced optimization for Microsoft Teams can be viewed as a form of edge computing where Citrix offloads the multimedia processing of Teams traffic onto the Workspace app on a user’s machine. Used in concert with the Office 365 integration, you can ensure that the network will identify, prioritize, and route voice and video streams for the best possible user experience.

Secure It All

We’d be remiss for having a networking conversation without mention of security. As part of our flexible and comprehensive approach to protecting your business, Citrix offers the following options for security:

  • ICSA Labs-certified, application aware, stateful firewall integrated into our physical and virtual appliances
  • Secure Web Gateway (SWG) options from Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, Symantec, and more
  • NGFW (next generation firewall) from Palo Alto Networks as a VNF on the Citrix SD-WAN 1100 platform

And by the way, provisioning automation is provided through Citrix SD-WAN Orchestrator for the last two options.

Learn more about how Citrix SD-WAN can help you extend the network to Azure and deliver exceptional experience for Office 365 and all your enterprise apps with security.

And if you’re at Microsoft Ignite, stop by the Citrix booth (#1949) and find out how Citrix SD-WAN, together with Microsoft Azure, can help you to automate your on-ramps to the cloud, deliver exceptional application experience, and provide comprehensive security.