From the 'aaah now I get it' files:

I've spoken to many vendors over the last few years about application and WAN acceleration.  The gist of the conversation is usually the same, 'we can accelerate more than our competitors and we're better because...blah blah blah...'

So you can imagine my skepticism when I took a briefing with Sanjay Uppal, Citrix VP of Marketing for the Advanced Networking Group about their latest NetScaler device. I've written about NetScaler and its counterpart WANscaler before (typically around Interop time, surprisingly enough) so I've heard their spiel (and I've heard their competitors trash talk it too).

This time out they're announcing a new top end device - the NetScaler MPX - which Citrix claims does 2.5 times the application delivery traffic of the previous top-end Citrix device. Though speeds and feeds are a core part of the network business, that's not the part of the conversation that really got me interested.

What really peaked my interest is how the NetScaler MPX ties into Citrix's XenSource virtualization technology assets to dynamically scale up or scale down virtual servers on demand to meet network traffic demand.

"If there is a surge of traffic NetScaler informs the XenServer which then provisions an additional server," Uppal explained to InternetNews.com. "This goes beyond load balancing with a pool of servers, as this solution will actually power up a server that wasn't on."

So let's step back here for a minute to understand the significance of this technology integration.

In order to provide network capacity, generations of network administrators have had to run multiple servers and then put in a front end load balancer to distribute traffic. What Citrix is now promoting is the idea that you can power up and power down servers dynamically based on demand together with application acceleration. The implications for power and overall utilization efficiency are tremendous.

It also really makes a whole lot of sense for Citrix (since they own XenSource) to fully leverage and integrate assets.

Is this a game changer for application acceleration?

I think it could be, since a fundamental part of acceleration is availability. It's something that stands out amongst all the similar commoditized messages and pitches that I've heard over the years.

I expect that it's something that Citrix CEO Mark Templeton will also highlight in his Interop keynote address this week. Virtualization isn't just about consolidation anymore it's about efficiency overall.