Citrix showcases the latest in application selivery technology at the Citrix Applications Delivery Tour

The premier event, due to be rolled out to neighboring GCC states and held in association with NetApp, will see industry leaders gathering to explore the state of the application delivery industry and experience first hand how the Citrix platform can meet the challenges of a dynamic world.

Citrix will also showcase its latest virtualization technology developments with the introduction of Citrix XenServer and Citrix XenDesktop delivering desktop virtualization. NetApp will highlight its recently expanded Manageability Software Family focusing on helping companies transform their data centres with new virtualization capabilities. These include the new SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructures enabling customers to protect their VMware environments with automated data protection and recovery of their virtual machines.

In addition, the two companies will demonstrate the new storage delivery services for the NetApp operating system Data ONTAP in the latest Citrix XenServer release, allowing joint customers to leverage the innovative NetApp data management capabilities directly from their XenCenter management console.

"Hosting the Application Delivery Tour in the UAE with NetApp is a testament to our commitment to continued innovation in 2008," said Antoine Aguado, Middle East Regional Director, Citrix.

"The Tour is an opportunity to introduce Citrix's end to end virtualisation offering, including CitrixXenServer and Citrix XenDesktop, and more importantly, it is a great platform for thought leaders to discuss the hottest trends in the market including virtualization and application delivery."

"The Citrix's Xen family of virtualization solutions, is the only end-to-end virtualization solution for complete application delivery on the market," Aguado added. "In the era where businesses run on applications, the ability to deliver applications and desktops to any user, anytime, anywhere from a secure central location is rapidly becoming a core focus for most IT organizations."

According to IDC, the global virtualization market, spurred by the increasing popularity of server virtualization, is expected to grow at 113% over the next three years. Global virtualization services, which were worth $5.5bn last year, are predicted to increase to a value of $11.7bn by 2011.

"The benefits that can be derived from vitalizing applications for IT managers are clear; secure centralized control and simple management and deployment of applications." Added Aguado "There are comparable benefits for end users too; a consistently-high experience of securely accessing your applications and data from wherever you are, and what Citrix is doing that takes this technology to a new level is the ability to roll out virtualization to a wider number of applications, spreading the benefits more broadly across the business and enabling greater consolidation at the server level."

"The ability to bring more applications onto a single server without impacting their performance is what allows the automation of application management and what will, ultimately, make application virtualization a 'must have' for business, finally our application delivery infrastructure will enable any datacenter to become a delivery centre," he concluded.