At its Synergy 2010 conference today, Citrix and its partners made several product announcements. According to Computer World, two are especially intriguing: a new pay-as-you-go pricing model for its NetScaler application and an option to run a bare-metal implementation of McAfee’s security software.
“Citrix senior vice president and chief marketing officer Wes Wasson said the new ‘pay as you go pricing’ for the NetScaler WAN optimization device ‘brings the elasticity and scalability of the cloud environment into the data center.’ From a business model perspective it’s really different though. Citrix’s cost to sell you the device is the same. It’s one box, in your data center, used only by your organization. It’s not installed in a shared tenancy configuration where Citrix can spread the cost across multiple users by charging everyone a use fee. Rather, you’re sold a bandwidth crippled device that can be unlocked in increments. Nonetheless, users may like the idea of paying less now and more later, as device utilization increases.”
