Citrix unveils new mobile workspace solutions

 Matt Morgan, vice president of corporate product marketing at Citrix.

Matt Morgan, vice president of corporate product marketing at Citrix.

At its Citrix Synergy event, Citrix has announced enhancements to its mobile workspace solutions in accordance with its vision of mobile workspace solutions. These make it possible for people to work better by  better enabling secure delivery of apps, desktops, data and services to any user, on any device, over any network or cloud.

“This is Citrix’s 25th anniversary, but it is also a big one for us in terms of the strategic decisions that enable us,” said Matt Morgan, vice president of corporate product marketing at Citrix. “Our strategy is focused on  mobile workspaces – a new category – which encompasses all the assets to enable a mobile workstyle being available from any connection on any device. Analysts are talking about it mobile workspaces as an emerging topic but we are working on it now. It’s a big deal for the company.”

The most eye-catching of the new announcements is the new Citrix Workspace Suite, which combines key Citrix technologies, including application and desktop virtualization, mobile application and device management, native mobile productivity apps, enterprise file sync and share, WAN optimization and an access gateway, into a single, flexible solution that will support multiple corporate or personal devices per user.

“We believe this is category-defining software, and the first of its kind on the market,” Morgan said. “No one else can provide such a holistic offering.”

Morgan said the suite can appeal to a broad customer base, not just large customers.

“It can scale up or down in any organization,” he said. “It is valuable in any organizations that have compliance regulations, so hospitals are a logical market for it, even though most are not large.”

Morgan said the suite’s launch is being accompanied by many promotions, including 70% off for existing XenApp, XenDesktop, XenMobile and ShareFile Enterprise customers who upgrade, 25% off for BlackBerry enterprise users who migrate, 25% off licenses for use with new Google Chromebooks, and a 50% discount for customers who move from VMware Horizon or VMware View. The Citrix Workspace Suite is available now.

Citrix also announced its’ XenMobile 9.0 release and previewed new mobile productivity apps.

“XenMobile is a technology base that has been very successful for us, which grew over 100% year over year, and with 85% opting for XenMobile Enterprise, which is a massive shift from 18 months ago,” Morgan said. “Customers want to secure not just devices, but data that live on them.”

The XenMobile 9.0 release expands support to Windows Phone 8.1, and contains operational and scalability enhancements as well as backend integrations that further automate mobile workflows.

“The main enhancements are on WorxMail and the WorxWeb browser and the integration between them,” Morgan said. “They create ‘Inbox Zero,’ where you can flip through email by scrolling up and down, instead of having to open every email. The enhancements also let you move seamlessly between apps.”

Citrix released the new versions of XenApp and XenDesktop in March, so there were no new releases on these fronts. However Citrix did indicate new directions for these solutions. These include a new version of HTML5 Citrix Receiver, which now works with Google Chromebooks to enable fast log-ons, simplify roaming apps across multiple devices and support the latest USB 3.0 peripherals.

“We are also releasing a technology preview of a new migration utility that will simplify the migration and upgrade process to the new releases, with 90% less overhead,” Morgan said.

Citrix also unveiled new features for their Citrix ShareFile cloud file sharing and storage service.

“ShareFile is one of our fastest growing products, which provides file sharing and storage which IT can control,” Morgan said. “The new release has tons of new features, including a new ShareFile StorageZone Connectors SDK that lets you develop connectors to any third party enterprise content management system. It also now lets you take ownership of encryption, so you can leverage cloud-based solutions like Azure but keep encryption in house. You can also now interface personal data storage like Box and Dropbox directly from ShareFile – and replace them with a click.”

Finally, Citrix unveiled its new NetScaler MobileStream Technology, which improves mobile network and application performance along with network visibility, while tightening security for both the enterprise and the end user.

“It now gives full visibility of what’s being transmitted,” Morgan said. It will be available in Q2 2014.

This article originally appeared on eChannelLine.com.