The emphasis was firmly on improving the mobility experience at Citrix Synergy this year, with streaming, security and user experience all receiving attention.
TechPro caught up with Irish country manager, Grace O’Rourke Veitch, to get the main points of the announcements from the annual bash.
“This is about extending out the solutions we have to encompass a full, end-to-end mobility solution,” said O’Rourke Veitch.
One of the principle announcements in enabling greater service for mobility users was around WorkSpace Suite. The suite is made up of XenDesktop Platinum, XenMobile Enterprise and XenApp MDM App DNA, and includes NetScaler Gateway user licences.
“This is really about enabling a company to provide end-to-end mobility, from streaming apps to securing apps on any device on any network,” said O’Rourke Veitch.
The suite allows organisations to deliver secure access to applications, data and services to any device. It is, says Citrix, a complete and powerful solution, optimised to meet performance, security and mobility requirements with individualisation for each user and instant access to personalised desktops, mobile, web, and Windows apps, data and services over any network. “Freedom to choose how, where and when work happens enables workforce mobility and productivity,” says Citrix.
To facilitate this experience, Citrix also announced the launch of NetScale mobile stream technology.
This release boasts a set of features that dramatically improve mobile and network application performance, along with network visibility and tightening security for the enterprise and the end user.
Specifically, NetScale mobile stream technology speeds up delivery of web apps and web content to mobile users by up to five times. This is directly combatting slow load times, and poor and inconsistent user experience for mobile, says O’Rourke Veitch.
However, Citrix could not ignore the ‘being your own’ trend, and so had to ensure that its new services and capabilities could bring benefits, irrespective of screen size.
Citrix needed to be able to take advantage of the technology in mobile devices, said such as touchscreens, said O’Rourke Veitch, irrespective of the specific device.
The ShareFile data access and storage service has also been improved for greater access and interoperability.
“ShareFile also allows access from Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive,” said O’Rourke Veitch, “because we recognise that people use a variety of solutions and consumer solutions as well. So we need to make ourselves open and give the user choice, because they will choose what they want.”
“I think companies are beginning to realise that they need to just embrace it instead of trying to just control it,” she added.
Sharefile gets a number of new features, such as integration with many enterprise content management system.
“We now have SDK kits that allow partner organisations to develop connectors into ECMs, and also more storage options to access files. So for example, a lot of users may have kept corporate files Dropbox, and now if the enterprise wants to get that off Dropbox and back into enterprise systems, they can now do that and bring them across,” said O’Rourke Veitch.
Businesses can now manage their own storage zones in Microsoft Azure, she said, so that enables them to have it on-premise or in Azure, giving them more flexibility as to where they want their data.
“There are a lot of people out there using consumer services because it’s easy — we all do it. It’s about providing a replacement for those so that people will use something else that is safe and secure,” said O’Rourke Veitch.
Other notable updates were to XenApp and XenDesktop, as well as the Citrix Receiver getting HTML 5 compliance, facilitating a wider range of devices, as well as working in Google’s Chrome OS.
Citrix also launched XenMobile 9. The enterprise mobility management suite for apps, data, and devices secures data in motion, provides faster authentication, and includes new work productivity tools. It now supports Windows 8.1 desktops and Windows Phone 8.
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