ORLANDO – Saying today’s line of business users are demanding a more consumer-like technology experience at work, with user-friendly apps and go-anywhere computing, Citrix Systems made a number of announcements this week to help realize that vision.
Citrix told attendees at the vendor’s annual Citrix Synergy user conference that modern workspaces are no longer confined to a specific physical location or device. People want to work from anywhere on a variety of devices, from tablets and laptops to smartphones, whether owned by them or their employer. They want consumer-like apps and instant and seamless access to data – and IT is under pressure to make it happen. Meeting these demands requires new security policies, new management processes and end-user settings, all supported by flexible IT infrastructure.
“The reality is that the ever-changing consumer marketplace has come to define the technologies that people want to use at work – and rightfully so, since they offer significant enhancements to productivity and efficiency,” said Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Citrix, in a statement. “We wanted to find a way to help businesses feed the wave of innovation versus having to react to it. By enabling on-demand IT for a workspace world, our customers can now deploy new resources in minutes and manage them with ease, no matter where it resides or what device people are using – all while enhancing security, user productivity and business agility.”
At this week’s conference, Citrix’s announcements included:
- Citrix Workspace Cloud, which creates a control plane merging the on-premises and cloud worlds so IT managers can create secure, mobile workspaces for desktops, applications and data from either infrastructure based on their needs.
- Enhancements to its ShareFile enterprise file sync and sharing service with a ShareFile workspace that follows a user across devices and new capabilities to restrict document sharing and integration with Office Online to edit Microsoft Office documents directly.
- A new version of application delivery controller NetScaler with unified remote access infrastructure that consolidates all remote access for enterprise, web, mobile, cloud and SaaS applications into one solution.
- Improvements to XenApp and XenDesktop as well as Citrix Receiver, new cloud-based services to aid migrations to the new releases, and support for Linux with a new Linux virtual desktop feature.
- Coupling Citrix StoreFront 3.0 with Citrix Receiver to unite IT services delivered by XenApp, XenDesktop, and XenMobile
Michael Murphy, vice-president and country manager for Canada with Citrix Systems, said Citrix has been espousing its thought leadership position around the modern workplace for some years and, with the technology announcements made at Synergy, it’s closer than ever before.
“(At Synergy) we went through use cases where this vision came to live with prototypes and real-world examples around workflow and flexible workspaces,” said Murphy. “Imagine individuals walking into an office and automatically having their credentials recognized and desktop populated. It’s about automation and complexity.”
Murphy said it could also be making it easier to dial into a conference call, access connectivity or connect to the projector in a board room. Making these everyday interactions with technology less complicated and more automated is the workspace of the future.
“Underneath that is the framework of what people have been doing with Citrix for some time – enabling choice of any device across the network and accessing data and apps seamlessly,” said Murphy. “(The future workplace is) extending that paradigm, injecting more automation and abstraction and using software to define the workspace.”