Citrix Launches Commercial Version of OpenStack Cloud Platform

Citrix System has added Project Olympus, a new cloud product, to its open cloud computing portfolio to complement its Citrix NetScaler Cloud Gateway and NetScaler Cloud Bridge.

Citrix Systems announced Project Olympus, a new cloud infrastructure product based on the open-source cloud operating system OpenStack, at Citrix Synergy Summit on May 25. Project Olympus will be the first commercialized version of OpenStack and will begin shipping later this year, Citrix said.

Based on OpenStack, Project Olympus will help customers build real infrastructure-as-a-service clouds that are scalable, efficient and open by design because they use the same architecture, approach and technology behind “some of today’s largest and most successful clouds in the world,” Citrix said in reference to existing OpenStack implementations.

"Build a real cloud in your data center based on OpenStack and XenServer. The early access program starts today," said Citrix CEO Mark Templeton in a keynote address at Synergy.

Public cloud providers can leverage Project Olympus to create customized features within the cloud infrastructure, while enterprises looking for efficiency and flexibility can use the platform to build private clouds, Citrix said.

“There was no better project to help bring Project Olympus to fruition than OpenStack, with its dedicated industry support, rich ecosystem and rapid pace of innovation,” said Sameer Dholakia, vice president of product marketing, data center and cloud division at Citrix.

Public clouds like Amazon and Rackspace have set the bar for how real clouds should be built, yet many first-generation cloud products “force-fit” the cloud into existing server virtualization architecture, according to Dholakia. Citrix will be working with the open-source community to bring open, elastic scale-out infrastructures of leading infrastructure-as-a-service clouds to private clouds instead of giving them an “imitation cloud,” Dholakia said.

For more, read the eWEEK article: Citrix Unveils Project Olympus, Commercial Version of OpenStack Cloud Platform.