Citrix announced at Citrix Synergy™, the conference where cloud computing, networking and virtualization meet, that it is opening up its recently acquired ShareFile data cloud to create an extensible platform for sharing business data across a wide range of apps, devices and services. The company’s new “Follow-Me-Data Fabric” will make it easy for third-party developers and vendors to incorporate common data services like search, share, sync, secure and remote wipe into their solutions through a set of open APIs. Taking a platform approach will also make it easier to create dynamic mesh-ups that extend secure data sharing services to both new and existing apps, and ensure that user data can be accessed easily and securely from millions of business and consumer devices. Citrix also announced the first two products in its own portfolio that will be integrated into this open data fabric, Citrix Receiver™, the company’s universal software client, and Citrix GoToMeeting, the award-winning collaboration solution (see graphic).
Delivering on the Personal Cloud Vision
In the PC Era, data was typically stored on a single personal computer, accessed from a physical office, and shared via flash drives or email. As the industry transitions to the Cloud Era, an increasingly mobile workforce is demanding easy access to data that is un-tethered from offices and devices, and easy to share and collaborate securely with others. These trends are giving rise to the concept of a “personal cloud” – the aggregation of apps, data, preferences and friends that are unique to each individual employee, and move seamlessly across any device or location. Citrix is leading the charge to empower people to work and play from anywhere by delivering “follow-me-desktops” and “follow-me-apps,” and now “follow-me-data.”
Connecting Cloud Data into other Citrix products
The company’s new data cloud platform will be leveraged across the Citrix portfolio in three key areas:
- Citrix ShareFile – The Citrix ShareFile™ software-as-a-service (SaaS) product line itself will continue to make it easy for businesses of all sizes to securely store, sync and share business documents and files, both inside and outside the company. Its centralized cloud storage capability allows users to share files across multiple devices and access them from any location (see Synergy demo video).
- Follow-Me-Data via Citrix Receiver – Millions of people use Citrix Receiver today to access their apps and desktops from any device. By integrating data sharing directly into Citrix Receiver, it will be extended to offer users self-service access to data from any device, anywhere. With this integration, Citrix Receiver will become a single point of access and self-service for users to all their business apps, desktops and data. A technology preview for Follow-Me-Data for Citrix Receiver will be released in the near future (see Synergy demo video). More information can be found at http://FMD.citrix.com.
- GoToMeeting with Workspaces – Leveraging the Follow-Me-Data platform, the next generation of GoToMeeting will add easy-to-use, real-time data collaboration. Now, regardless of if or when a meeting occurs, users have a way to store and share files and meeting notes in one secure place. And when they are working together on a shared document, they can easily start a meeting with a single click (see Synergy demo video). This is a key part of the company’s integrated collaboration vision, combining high-definition web, audio, video and file-based collaboration.
Citrix Ready ISV Partners Can Leverage Follow-Me-Data for their Solutions
Citrix is also extending the Follow-Me-Data capabilities to Citrix Ready® software and application partners. As customers and partners build on the Follow-Me-Data platform, they will be able to easily add follow-me-data services to their products, leveraging the data that other apps store there, and instantly inheriting all the management, mobility and scalability that is in the Citrix ShareFile infrastructure.