Nowadays customers run their data centres from multiple cloud or on-premise locations and in some cases every location has its own web-based portals. The use of different portals creates confusion for customers and makes it more difficult for end users to choose the right portal. Citrix has come up with a cloud workspace delivery controller solution –Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway– to tackle the issue raised in this example. Citrix delivers solutions that make it possible to provide different web-based applications on a single portal.
The main features of Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway are:
- Access to cloud and enterprise applications through a single URL
- NetScaler with Unified Gateway provides a single point of entry for all users and devices. All devices can connect to the portal, so the user experience is the same for all users.
- Unified Remote Access infrastructure
- Remote access is consolidated into a single end-to-end solution for all enterprise, web, mobile, cloud and SaaS applications, as well as Citrix applications, on any device.
- Single Sign-On
- NetScaler provides federation identity based on SAML 2.0 standards for Single Sign-On to cloud and enterprise applications
The Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway feature is provided on Citrix NetScaler 11 appliances and you need at least a Citrix NetScaler Enterprise or Platinum licence in order to use it.
Any enterprise web-based application, such as Microsoft Exchange webmail, Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Skype for Business, can be published on Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway. Citrix NetScaler also has seamless integration with Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop and can be published in the Citrix Unified Gateway feature. For cloud-based applications like Microsoft Office 365, Citrix NetScaler can be used as an ADFS Proxy, enabling access to the applications from the Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway portal.
The connection has SSL security, while a standard or micro VPN connection can easily be made to ensure end-to-end encryption. On top of that, Citrix NetScaler provides endpoint analysis (EPA) to ensure that connected devices are compliant and secure. To manage the different enterprise and user-owned devices that connect to Citrix Unified Gateway, an extra management layer can be created by integrating Citrix XenMobile. Citrix XenMobile is an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution for managing different mobile devices and the enterprise apps for these devices.
In the next section, I will show you the look and feel of Citrix Unified Gateway and explain how to change certain settings.
Configuration Citrix NetScaler Unified Gateway
The initial log-on page in the cloud
It is possible to customise the log-on page and import a special theme for your portal, but I will explain how to do that in another blog.