ANAHEIM, CALIF. – Citrix Systems Inc. made a number of announcements this week during its Synergy conference here. Aiming its products and services at businesses looking to access their data across desktops and devices, most of the news coming out of the conference centred around mobile and cloud.
Here’s a quick roundup of what you need to know:
Workspace Services
As the very last, almost-surprise announcement on day one, this garnered the most attention from both press and analysts.
Workspace Services is a cloud-based platform running on Microsoft Azure. It’s designed for Citrix partners and customers aiming to build and deliver their own mobile workspaces, as well as their own desktops-as-a-service (DaaS).
Once businesses create these workspaces, they can run them on any cloud, and Citrix partners also have the option to build out the platform for multiple tenants in the markets they’re serving.
The platform contains a full slate of services, including desktops, apps, mobility solutions, and data sharing, and it integrates with not just Azure, but also public clouds, private clouds, and customers’ own data centres. Workspace Services will go into a technology preview in the second half of 2014.
XenMobile 9
As an update to its XenMobile portfolio, version offers improvements to the enterprise mobility management solution.
New capabilities to WorxMail, Citrix’s answer to the native email apps that come preloaded onto smart phones, include a “triage” feature that allows users to quickly click through their email. They can flip through their emails, swiping upwards on emails to mark them as read, or swiping downwards to delete them.
WorxWeb provides secure access to company intranet, and it also offers support for users who want to view their webpages offline while they’re on the run.
There are also some options for capturing and sharing notes, editing files, and accessing files from anywhere using a mobile device through new features like WorxNotes, WorxEdit, and WorxDesktop. Plus, Citrix has added support for Windows Phone 8, making sure those device users aren’t left out of the loop.
XenMobile 9 will be available for download next month, although WorxNotes, WorxEdit, and WorxDesktop will only be available as a technology preview.
ShareFile
While Citrix has been deploying ShareFile since acquiring it in 2011, the company has given it a boost with some new features. For example, businesses using ShareFile can now integrate it with any enterprise content management system, as Citrix has created a ShareFile StorageZone Connectors software development kit. Now users can access and edit more kinds of data using ShareFile.
IT administrators will also be happy to learn they can keep the encryption keys to their own data through ShareFile StorageZones on Microsoft Azure, instead of handing that over to their cloud service provider. These StorageZones and connectors are available now.
To support IT administrators, Citrix has enabled users who have stored corporate data into personal, consumer-facing clouds like DropBox, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive to move their data over into ShareFile using ShareFile’s Personal Cloud Connectors. These connectors will be made available in June.
Users can also create and edit Microsoft Office documents and annotate Adobe PDF files, and for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)iOS users, there will be a rerelease of the ShareFile app for iOS7. These features should be available sometime this month.
NetScaler and MobileStream technology
As a way of improving mobile network and application performance, Citrix is launching a new technology that will not only improve how mobile devices perform, but will also provide network visibility and security.
NetScaler MobileStream optimizes the amount of data a mobile device downloads when it opens an app, and it maximizes mobile page downloads and rendering. It also makes use of wireless and cellular connectivity with network mode technology, meaning apps will run five times faster, according to Citrix. NetScaler also includes Citrix’s TriScale, deploying mobile services over the cloud. NetScaler MobileStream should be available in the second quarter of this year.
A new partnership with Cisco
Besides launching its own technologies, Citrix (Nasdaq: CTXS) also revealed it’s partnering with Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to release the “Cisco Mobile Workspace Solution with Citrix.” Aiming their solution at enterprise organizations and governments, the new solution uses Citrix Workspace Suite and is touted as being end-to-end.
Its key selling points are security, a better user experience, easier deployment options for IT departments, and Cisco’s design architecture. The solution will be available by the end of the month.
