Citrix Synergy™, the conference where mobile workstyles and cloud services meet, Citrix unveiled the next phase of its strategy to enable the mobile enterprise. With the advent of the Cloud Era, an increasingly mobile workforce is looking for easier ways to work the way they want – with anyone, from any location, on any device. Citrix is enabling these mobile workstyles with an expanding portfolio of personal cloud solutions that give employees the freedom and flexibility they want, combined with the security and control businesses need.
Today’s announcements make it easier for companies of all sizes to go mobile – empowering employees to interact securely with any combination of people, data, apps and devices – then bringing it all together in a seamless, integrated experience for end users.
People
The Citrix mobile enterprise strategy begins with a focus on empowering people to work from anywhere, with anyone, on any device. To enable today’s increasingly mobile workforce, Citrix today announced GoToMeeting® HDFaces for the iPad, combining video conferencing, audio conferencing and screen sharing into a single, seamlessly integrated experience for mobile workers. This breakthrough all-in-one solution makes it easy to collaborate face-to-face while on the go, all from the convenience of a lightweight mobile tablet.
Today’s mobile workstyles also require a new approach to team collaboration. To address this growing demand, Citrix today unveiled the first solution from its recent acquisition of Podio. The new Citrix Podio offering delivers a powerful cloud-based team collaboration platform for companies of all sizes. Unlike complex PC Era solutions, Podio brings the power of mobile and social to team collaboration, making it easy for people to work the way they want in dynamic team workspaces, across any mix of employees, contractors and partners.
Finally, Citrix made it easier for IT to support workers when they themselves are on the go. The new GoToAssist® for mobile devices lets IT professionals provide live support from anywhere, connecting to employee computers and solving problems directly from their iPad, Android tablets or Android phone.
Data
The second pillar of the Citrix mobile enterprise strategy is a focus on data. The centerpiece of this strategy is Citrix ShareFile™, a powerful cloud-based file sharing service that makes it easy for people to share files with others, and to ensure that their information follows them across devices, regardless of where it was initially created and saved.
To expand this cloud file sharing capability to a broader set of enterprise customers, Citrix today unveiled the new ShareFile StorageZones technology, giving enterprise customers the ability to choose optimal locations for storing corporate data – either off-premise in the public cloud, or on-premise, within their own private datacenters. The new ShareFile StorageZones technology makes it easier for enterprise customers to meet security, compliance and performance requirements, without giving up the simplicity and elasticity of cloud-based data services.
Citrix also announced it is plugging ShareFile into its popular Citrix Receiver™ software client, used by millions of people around the world every day to access business applications on any PC, Mac, tablet or smart phone. As a result of this integration, end users will be able to open, view, edit, save and share documents on their personal and mobile devices, regardless of where those documents were initially created. This breakthrough new integration delivers on the promise of bringing follow-me-data to people as they move across different devices.
Apps
The third component of the Citrix mobile enterprise strategy centers on applications. With most business applications today designed for Windows, desktop virtualization has gained significant momentum as the primary way of delivering Windows apps and desktops as a service from the datacenter. To make it easier for customers to get started with virtual desktops, Citrix today announced a new RemotePC option as part of the popular FlexCast® delivery technology in its market-leading Citrix XenDesktop® product line. Using the new RemotePC capability, XenDesktop customers will be able to quickly turn existing office PCs into distributed VDI hubs without setting up additional servers and storage in the datacenter. This innovative new solution makes it easy for IT to give end users fast, secure remote access to all the apps and data on their office PC from any device. Once IT is ready to move to a more full-service VDI implementation, these distributed RemotePC images can be easily moved into the datacenter to run in a traditional hosted VDI model for better consolidation, security and management efficiency.
As the app landscape shifts, an increasing percentage of business applications are being delivered as web, SaaS, cloud and mobile apps. As this transition occurs, businesses need a simple way to secure and control this diverse mix of apps, while giving users easy, self-service access to all their work apps and data from a secure company app store. To deliver on this promise, Citrix today announced Citrix CloudGateway 2, a powerful new update to its unified storefront solution that adds extensive mobile application management capabilities, including full support for native HTML5, iOS and Android apps. The new CloudGateway release also adds integration with ShareFile, giving customers a single unified control point for all apps and data enterprise-wide.
Devices
The fourth pillar of the Citrix mobile enterprise strategy focuses on devices. The centerpiece of this strategy is Citrix Receiver, the company’s universal software client, available on more than two billion PCs, Macs, thin clients, tablets and smartphones worldwide. Citrix Receiver makes it easy for customers to support bring your own (BYO), flex-working and work-from-home initiatives to enable mobile workstyles, regardless of the devices chosen by end users.
Citrix XenClient® extends the Citrix device support strategy to corporate laptop users with a secure, client-side hypervisor that runs directly on the laptop, even when disconnected from the network. Citrix strengthened its leading position in this market today with the acquisition of Virtual Computer, a provider of enterprise-scale management solutions for Xen-based client hypervisors. Citrix will combine the newly-acquired Virtual Computer technology with XenClient to create the new Citrix XenClient Enterprise edition. The combined solution will give corporate laptop users the power of virtual desktops to go, while making it far more secure and cost-effective for IT to manage large fleets of corporate laptops across a distributed mobile enterprise.
The final component of the Citrix device strategy centers on its innovative new Citrix HDX System-on-Chip (SoC) initiative, launched last October at Citrix Synergy Barcelona. This groundbreaking program was designed to enable an entirely new generation of devices, capable of running high-definition virtual desktops and apps at game-changing price points and form factors.
Citrix was joined by multiple partners today to unveil the first wave of devices featuring the new HDX SoC technology. New thin clients from ATrust, Centerm, NComputing and ThinLinx reduce the cost of high-performance HDX Ready thin clients by more than half, dramatically improving the return on investment for desktop virtualization just six months after the HDX SoC program was first announced. Citrix partner HP also unveiled an innovative new All-in-One zero client that uses Power-over-Ethernet and consumes a mere 13 watts of power, less than half that of comparable devices on the market today. Citrix expects additional innovations in price and design based on the new HDX SoC program to be announced by these and other partners in the coming months.
Bringing it All Together in a Seamless Experience for End Users
While enabling the mobile enterprise is a central focus for business and IT decisions makers worldwide, it is also increasingly important for end users. From the user perspective, however, enabling a mobile workstyle is far more personal. Users today have little patience for outdated applications, systems and devices that are complex to learn and operate, and will increasingly go around IT if simple solutions are not offered. Supporting these users means going beyond individual tools to provide a seamless experience where everything they need just works – intuitively, naturally and easily.
To deliver on this vision, Citrix announced a series of integrations between its user-facing apps like GoToMeeting, GoToAssist, Podio, ShareFile and Citrix Receiver – along with additional support for third-party apps and services like Evernote, GetSatisfaction, Microsoft Skydrive and Google Apps. By delivering innovative integrations between these apps and services, Citrix customers can ensure that their broader mobility and personal cloud strategies also resonate with end users who think less about the “Mobile Enterprise,” and more about “ME@work”.