Citrix is making enterprise mobility much easier

Citrix is building its business on a world where everything is mobile. At the Citrix Mobility Conference 2014 in Singapore, Rob Willis, VP Asia Pacific, Citrix, noted that we no longer live in a world where the majority of workers work in an office, on a company device, wired up to a network.

Source: Citrix. Willis speaks during the keynote.

"We see a lot more people being mobile, a much more global environment for everybody," he said during the keynote session. "As technology continues to evolve, we have to change the assumptions that we're working under. Today, we have to assume that everything is mobile."

According to Citrix, a mobile workspace requires new tools to empower employees while retaining links to the traditional Windows enterprise desktop. The ability to support mobile apps, secure data sharing, and collaboration is essential, said Willis, as is the assumption that personal devices will be used for work. 

"The goal is an end-to-end solution that we can deliver to you and to your users in a way that enables them to create a state-of-the-art, world class environment on any device," he said. 

US-based Raghu Nandan, Senior Director, Product Management, Citrix Mobile Platforms, noted that consumerisation of IT and the ‘app gap’ are leading to employees adopting apps which the IT department does not know about or does not think fall under its purview, causing security and compliance issues. “Most solutions have tried to provide piecemeal products in distinct silos,” he said. 

Citrix's solution is Workspace Suite, which is available for a suggested retail price of US$450 per user including maintenance. Trade-up promotions are available for existing customers and those who own selected competitor's products.

The suite bundles Citrix's existing products, providing access to all of a user's applications, data and personalised desktops, and is optimised to meet their security, performance, personalisation and mobility requirements. The suite includes Citrix offerings such as XenMobile, enterprise-ready mobile apps in the Worx family for productivity, such as apps that can be used safely while driving; tools to work with documents from Microsoft Office or similar apps, as well as connectors to software that is specific to a particular enterprise.

For companies on the "don't own stuff" (DOS) model, Workspace Suite is also available through the cloud as Workspace Services.

Nabeel Youakim, VP, Products and Microsoft Alliance, Citrix Asia Pacific, stressed that a lot of thought has gone into how Citrix solutions integrate with third party software. “We’re giving users as much of a PC-type experience as possible when they’re not on a PC,” he summarised. 

“Other guys are just coming into this market. They have a desktop, it doesn't do Windows apps. Without Windows apps, you can't run the business. The  new apps are very important, but unless you bring the old apps into the mix, we don't have a complete end-to-end story.”