Continuing on the topic on Synergy, changes to the XenMobile product suite was the other big announcement..
Lets take a step back..
Up until the beginning of this 2013, Citrix’s approach to mobililty was Mobile Application Management through their CloudGateway product. The strategy was that enterprises would have the ability to deliver SaaS, Web, Windows and mobile applications all from a unified portal with integrated identity management. Enterprises could wrap corporate applications (MDX wrapped apps) and then deploy these applications to mobile devices.. These applications would then be containerized and live within its own bubble on the mobile device. Policies could be applied to each wrapped application and they could talk to each other but not with the users personal applications and data. Everything within the container could be wiped without affecting the users personal data. In addition, CloudGateway provided Federated IdentityReceiver would be the single client that would be used across all devices.
While this was a great strategy for BYOD, there was a lot of push back from companies who still wanted to manage corporate owned devices, where they wanted the ability to do full wipes, enforce various policies at the device level and also other features like Geo Fencing.
Fast Forward to Jan 2013..
Based on the market demands, Citrix felt that it needed add MDM capabilities to its mobile management solution and hence acquired Zenprise (Gartner Magic Quadrant for MDM) and re branded the product XenMobile. With the addition of Zenprise, Citrix had a complete solution in XenMobile with both MAM and MDM capabilities. As part of the initial offering, there were two editions, the MDM edition which was basically Zenprise rebranded and the Mobility Solutions bundle which offered both MDM and MAM functionality. The other unique feature about the licensing model was that Citrix offered a per user licensing model, which makes a lot of sense in this day n age where most users have at least 3 devices.
While this was all great, there were some customers who only needed the MAM functionality and others who felt the features did not justify the cost. Also from an end user perspective, the solution was a bit kludgy. Â There were three clients namely the enroll agent (for enrolling the users device), connect (used to download profiles and enforce policies) and receiver (for delivering the containerized applications). All the clients were available through App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android)
So what did we announce at Synergy?
XENMOBILE EDITIONS UPDATED
Going forward, XenMobile will be available in three editions – MDM edition, APPÂ edition and Enterprise Edition. I really liked this announcement as I know of a number of customers in my space that are only interested in the MAM piece and now they have an options as opposed to just having to purchase the Enterprise edition. I am not going into MAM and MDM much as it has already been discussed earlier in the post, but in short, MDM = Zenprise and APP Edition = CloudGateway functionality.
The Enterprise edition will include App Edition, MDM, Sharefile (Citrix’s own follow me data product) and GoToAssist. This definitely adds a great amount of value to the product suite and provides customers with an all encompassing solution that allows them to:
- Manage mobile devices (both BYO and corporate owned) and enforce policies.
- Deliver SaaS, Windows, Internal Web and mobile applications to mobile devices.
- Identity management
- A secure follow me data solution through Sharefile with cloud and on-premise storage.
- Ability to remotely troubleshoot mobile devices with GoToAssist
 The solution keeps both IT management and end users happy as IT management gets the security profile they desire while the end users feel empowered and become more productive with all their corporate apps made available on their personal devices.
XENMOBILE COMPONENTS REBRANDED
As I mentioned earlier in the post, prior to Synergy the key end user facing Xenmobile components were Enroll and Connect. Receiver was used to deliver MDX wrapped applications. Going forward, the components will rebranded as Worx Enroll and Worx Home. Worx Enroll will be the device enrollment piece and Worx Home will be store for Mobile, Web and SaaS applications including Worx Mobile Apps (previously MDX wrapped apps)Â like Worx Web Worx Mail, Sharefile etc . Receiver will still be used to deliver XA/XD resources, but I think it is safe to assume that eventually XA/XD resources will be made available through Worx Home in the future. All the applications delivered via Worx Home will be available on the home screen along with all the other applications on your device. However each of these applications live within its own container and will be fully encrypted. Worx Home and Worx Enroll will be available through App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android).
Citrix also announced the Worx App Gallery, a place wheresoftware vendors/partners/independent developers can showcase their work enabled applications. Mark Templeton in his keynote mentioned that there are over 80 Worx enabled applications at present.
AVAILABILITY?
The new XenMobile offerings should be made available by end of June/early July
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I thought the XenMobile announcements were significant, offering solutions that fit most customer needs. There is significant value in the Enterprise edition with the addition of Sharefile and GoToAssist. Â I feel the pieces are finally coming together and my hope is that the end user experience is painless (only time will tell) and that the backend infrastructure gets more streamlined in the future. Gartner has positioned Citrix in the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management and rightly so in my opinion. I believe Citrix has the most complete solution in the market at present and more importantly the right people at the helm to lead this forward.