Skytap, Inc., a provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, on Monday announced it has joined the Citrix Ready program and is now making the Citrix NetScaler VPX virtual appliance available to its growing base of enterprise customers. Skytap users can now choose to deploy NetScaler VPX from Skytap's library of virtual appliance configurations, enabling them to increase control over their network infrastructure and accelerate application delivery.

NetScaler VPX is an application delivery and load balancing solution that is available as a virtual appliance with the richness of a best-in-class application delivery network. IT organizations of any size can deploy NetScaler VPX on-demand, anywhere in the datacenter, using industry standard servers. The simplicity and flexibility of NetScaler VPX make it easy and cost effective to fully optimize every web application and more effectively integrate networking services with application delivery.

Skytap provides cloud automation solutions for enterprises and software vendors to develop, test, migrate, evaluate, demo, and train on new and existing applications in the cloud. Skytap empowers users to run existing applications unchanged in the cloud, gain visibility and control over cloud initiatives, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Skytap customers can now easily incorporate NetScaler VPX into their development and test environments to cut the time and budget required to set-up and share virtual environments. The solution enables the cloud-based quality assurance process to emulate in-house environments that use Citrix NetScaler MPX hardware appliances in production.

"The introduction of NetScaler VPX into Skytap builds upon our industry leadership in network automation and represents yet another milestone in Skytap's effort to make the cloud mirror customers' in-house IT environments," said John Janakiraman, chief technology officer and chief architect at Skytap. "By integrating NetScaler VPX into Skytap, our customers will benefit from the industry's leading advanced application delivery and load balancing solution."

"Skytap and Citrix are both recognized for helping companies deal with the high cost and complexity of deploying web applications, making this combined solution a powerful choice for companies moving to the cloud," said Sunil Potti, vice president, networking and cloud product group, Citrix Systems. "Skytap's enterprise-ready cloud offering combined with Citrix network virtualization products will improve responsiveness, significantly lower costs and accelerate the delivery of mission-critical application for today's enterprises."