New Citrix NetScaler 8.0 Gives Customers Unprecedented Ability to Manage the Experience of Enterprise Application Users

Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced the newest version of its NetScaler product line, extending its ability to deliver web-based applications with the fastest performance, best security and lowest total cost of ownership. This newest release enables companies to keep pace with growing application complexity and rapidly rising user expectations by making it dramatically easier to set precise policies to match any application and user scenario. With significant new capabilities such as easy graphical policy configuration, full transaction-level application intelligence, integrated SSL VPN and web application firewall, as well as built-in end user experience monitoring, Citrix® NetScaler® 8.0 redefines the state-of-the-art in application delivery, making it far easier and more cost effective to deliver web-based applications to any user, on any device, in any location.

With the emergence of new technology trends such as Web 2.0, enterprise mash-ups and services oriented architectures (SOA), enterprise application environments are growing increasingly diverse and complex. At the same time, the growing popularity of highly interactive consumer web environments such as MySpace, You Tube and Google are dramatically resetting user expectations for what an enterprise web application experience should be like. With an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users going through a Citrix NetScaler system on any given day, Citrix has long been the leader in application delivery infrastructure for the world’s most demanding consumer web applications. The new NetScaler 8.0 release brings much of that experience to the world of enterprise web applications, giving IT administrators unprecedented ability to improve the experience of corporate application users.

To achieve these goals, the new NetScaler 8.0 release offers two significant areas of innovation. First, it sets a new standard in controlling application and user specific policies with its AppExpert Policy Framework and makes those policies far easier to configure with its groundbreaking AppExpert Visual Policy Builder. Second, it tightly integrates adjacent Citrix infrastructure technologies that are frequently deployed along the line-of-sight between web applications and users, becoming the first application delivery controller on the market to offer fully integrated SSL VPN for intelligent application access security, web application firewall for application and data protection, and end user experience monitoring to measure application performance from the perspective of the end user. Each of these newly integrated capabilities plugs into the AppExpert Policy Framework giving administrators unprecedented control over the entire web application delivery process.

According to Gartner, Inc.(1), “The application acceleration market addresses one of the most important problems facing IT organizations today — the reliable, dependable delivery of new and existing applications across LANs and WANs. Application acceleration appliances enable server/data center consolidation and deployment of browser-based application interfaces while lowering total cost of ownership.”

“We recognize trends in rich-web applications growing in complexity and cost, and as the web expands and users begin engaging these rich services for more time each day, we don’t see it getting easier anytime soon,” said Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane, an AOL company. “NetScaler allowed us to substantially lower cost and expand our network to support this growing demand.”

New Features Change the Game in Web Application Delivery
These new capabilities make Citrix NetScaler 8.0 the most strategic infrastructure for delivering any web application to any user in any location. Highlights include:


AppExpert Policy Framework: As applications become increasingly complex, applying the best acceleration, security and availability policies requires far deeper transaction-level intelligence than most application delivery controllers are capable of providing. This problem gets worse in a Web 2.0 world where many of the important details of a transaction are often wrapped inside web services or expressed deep inside the application payload where most networking systems have no visibility. NetScaler’s new AppExpert Policy Framework solves these problems by allowing administrators and developers to set policy for any NetScaler feature based on bi-directional visibility into the entire application stream, including the full application transaction, AJAX payload or XML message body. As a result, NetScaler administrators can now easily set policies that customize optimization settings for specific applications and automatically set higher levels of service or more stringent security inspections based on the dollar value or urgency of a user-initiated transaction. Unlike alternative products that have visibility only into basic header-level content, this powerful new capability allows NetScaler to apply the best delivery policy for each specific application and user scenario.
AppExpert Visual Policy Builder: Creating AppExpert rules is easy with the new AppExpert Visual Policy Builder. This powerful new tool uses graphical drop down menus and human-readable policy options, making it easy for administrators to configure specific policies for virtually any application or user scenario. Since AppExpert rules are internally validated within the AppExpert Policy Framework before being applied, administrators are automatically protected from creating policies that inadvertently disrupt traffic or conflict with other rules. AppExpert rules are also fully supported by Citrix and do not require network administrators to learn complex scripting languages to define application delivery polices.
AppExpert Developer APIs: While the AppExpert Visual Policy Builder represents a breakthrough in ease-of-use, developers occasionally need more programmatic ways to invoke policies as well. For these scenarios, AppExpert also provides powerful application programming interfaces (APIs) that use industry-standard web services description language (WSDL). Using AppExpert APIs, external applications and systems can automatically modify any NetScaler system setting and any AppExpert policy.
Built-in End User Experience Monitoring: With this release, NetScaler becomes the first web application delivery system on the market to give network administrators visibility into the actual experience of application users. Powered by the new Citrix EdgeSightTM for NetScaler technology, this fully integrated capability provides transparent performance monitoring of web applications, including fine-grained monitoring of specific web pages and individual application transactions. By providing administrators with both real-time monitoring and historical reporting of the end-user experience, NetScaler 8.0 makes it easy for IT administrators to support service level targets and enable more precise capacity planning decisions.
Integrated Web Application Security: The NetScaler 8.0 release raises the bar for web application security by seamlessly integrating the Citrix Application FirewallTM as a built-in NetScaler feature. This functionality gives NetScaler customers state-of-the-art protection from application threats that bypass traditional security measures, and eliminates the need to deploy separate devices for application protection. Integrating this functionality directly into the AppExpert Policy Framework allows customers to easily configure security features in the same way they build other application delivery policies. In addition to blocking damaging application-layer attacks, NetScaler’s newly integrated application firewall capabilities also assist businesses in complying with regulatory mandates such as the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS).
Integrated SSL VPN for Secure Application Access: In another industry first, NetScaler 8.0 makes secure access to applications easier by tightly integrating the market-leading Citrix Access GatewayTM, Enterprise Edition as an optional NetScaler functional module. Winner of multiple industry awards, Access Gateway gives users a common way to securely access all their applications from any location, whether they are being delivered by NetScaler or not. This capability features the innovative Citrix® SmartAccess technology that automatically responds to each user scenario with the appropriate level of application access, including control of actions such as print, save and edit.
Improved Ease-of-Use: In addition to making policy configuration easier through the new AppExpert Visual Policy Builder, NetScaler 8.0 also incorporates a wide range of usability improvements across all functional areas of the product. Enhancements include new system configuration wizards, a new management dashboard and broader support of enterprise systems management solutions through the addition of SNMP v3.
Enhanced Optimization and Scalability: As with each new release, NetScaler 8.0 also incorporates numerous optimization and scalability enhancements that extend Citrix’s leadership in comprehensive web application delivery. These new enhancements include improved load balancing capabilities based upon origin server SNMP MIBs, support for IBM Server Application State Protocol (SASP), advanced DNS functionality and additional TCP optimizations in areas such as window scaling and selective acknowledgement.
“The pressure enterprises are under to deliver a great experience for web application users has never been higher,” said Klaus Oestermann, vice president and general manager, Application Networking Group, Citrix Systems. “As the trend in moving applications to the web evolves across all industries and markets, the Citrix NetScaler product line allows companies of all sizes to optimize, secure, and simplify the delivery of their web applications.”

NetScaler is a key offering in Citrix’s portfolio of end-to-end application delivery infrastructure solutions. With these products, Citrix offers customers the most complete solution for delivering any application, to any user, in any location with the best performance, security and cost savings.

Pricing and Availability
Citrix NetScaler 8.0 is available today through authorized NetScaler resellers worldwide. Citrix EdgeSight for NetScaler will be available in the new Citrix NetScaler Platinum Edition, which is scheduled for general availability in Q2 2007. Citrix Application Firewall and Citrix Access Gateway are available as standalone appliances, or can be deployed as integrated software modules on a NetScaler 8.0 system.

NetScaler 8.0 pricing begins at a suggested retail price of approximately $17,500. For full pricing and packaging details, please visit http://www.citrix.com/netscaler.

Training and Certification
New instructor-led and e-Learning training courses will be available to help end-users and partners maximize their use of NetScaler 8.0. In addition, a new CCA (Citrix Certified AdministratorTM) certification track is being developed especially for the NetScaler line of products. The new courses and certification are expected to be available upon product release. For more information, please visit the Citrix Education website at http://www.citrixeducation.com.

About Citrix NetScaler
Citrix NetScaler optimizes the delivery of web applications—improving performance, increasing security, and improving web server capacity. This approach ensures the best total cost of ownership (TCO), security, availability, and performance for web applications. The Citrix NetScaler solution is a comprehensive network system that combines high-speed load balancing and content switching with state-of-the-art application acceleration, layer 4-7 traffic management, data compression, dynamic content caching, SSL acceleration, network optimization, and robust application security into a single, tightly integrated solution. Deployed in front of application servers, the system significantly reduces processing overhead on application and database servers, reducing hardware and bandwidth costs.

About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 180,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 98% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2006 was $1.1 billion.

For Citrix Investors
This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.