NetApp and Citrix have partnered on a new reference architecture that provides a storage platform for Citrix's ShareFile enterprise file sharing software to serve customers looking to address the growing mobile bring-your-own-device trend.

Citrix this week said it is working with NetApp to deliver a reference architecture optimized for Citrix ShareFile with StorageZones using NetApp's FAS and V-Series storage systems running its clustered Data Ontap storage operating system.

The partnership resulted from a need to help customers deal with their end users' increasing adoption of personal mobile devices to access and share corporate data while providing IT administrators the ability to provide control and security as data access becomes more and more decentralized, said Jesse Lipson, vice president and general manager for data sharing at Citrix.

[Related: Citrix Adds Enterprise File Sharing To ShareFile With New StorageZones]

"We need to marry these two requirements in the middle without going to either extreme," Lipson said.

Citrix's ShareFile cloud storage offerings target businesses looking to share files across the cloud while meeting compliance and regulatory concerns.

ShareFile helps business users send confidential files, or files that are too large to send as email attachments, which are typically not encrypted, and is targeted at both SMB and enterprise customers. It used Amazon cloud storage offerings in the past, but this year became available for use in-house on on-premises storage systems.

The company in May unveiled plans to add StorageZones to ShareFile, and last month officially released the combined Citrix ShareFile with StorageZones offering. StorageZones adds to ShareFile the ability to run the ShareFile application in the cloud but store the data on-premises, in the cloud or both, Lipson said.

StorageZones was based on technology the company received with its acquisition last year of ShareFile, which at the time was a six-year-old cloud storage file sharing and collaboration software developer.

StorageZones features StorageZones Connectors, which lets customers tie iOS, Android and BlackBerry applications to data stored on legacy storage devices, providing a secure mobile system and giving businesses an alternative to less-secure, consumer-focused file sharing technology such as Dropbox, Lipson said.

While Citrix ShareFile with StorageZones could work with any CIFS-based storage arrays to host the data to be shared, Citrix chose NetApp as its preferred storage partner, Lipson said.

"With NetApp, we are creating a reference architecture and integrated solutions so Citrix ShareFile with StorageZones works best on NetApp," Lipson said. "We work with each others' APIs to ensure they work together."

NEXT: Reference Architecture For Mobile File Sharing

Citrix's Lipson said the company currently has no plans to develop similar reference architectures with other storage vendors.

Jim Sangster, NetApp's senior director of solutions marketing, said his company's FAS and V-series storage systems provide the security and efficiency needed to enable secure file sharing for businesses.

"This is an enterprise-grade technology, which IT can use to get their hands around the data while allowing users to remain free," Sangster said.

Lipson said Citrix and NetApp have hundreds of joint channel partners, and that any channel partner already certified on the two vendors' products can offer the joint solutions.

"We have also created SKUs for offering enterprise SLAs [service level agreements] on the solutions," he said. "This is an easy program for partners who may be too small to have their own SLAs."

PUBLISHED NOV. 8, 2012