Digital transformation, cloud and new workstyles are forcing businesses to rethink how and where technology is deployed and secured. This week at Citrix Synergy, Citrix is unveiling new innovations that support the shift to people-centric computing, enabling organisations to deliver a superior work experience that unifies everything an employee needs in one place, while meeting the strictest compliance and security needs of the organisation. To ensure employee engagement and productivity, companies must deliver a unified workspace experience that adapts to how and where work needs to get done; one that gives IT the confidence to support and manage their choice of network, cloud or device; and provides a holistic security framework that dynamically detects and applies policies everywhere from the datacenter to the most remote endpoint.
“We, at Citrix, are committed to enabling people-centric computing within organisations. We are at a place where mobile users now equal those in a traditional office environment and organisations must deliver a unified work experience. Our solutions deliver the experience, security and choice that people and organisations need to innovate, engage customers and be productive – anytime and anywhere,” said David Henshall, CEO, Citrix.
Unifying experience with SaaS, web, mobile and virtual apps
Employee experience and productivity have become a top priority for CEOs. Providing reliable access to the applications, devices and content employees prefer has proven to boost employee productivity and drive improved business performance. Experience must be personalised and adaptable. Citrix is expanding its portfolio of delivering virtual apps, desktops and mobile apps to provide secure access to SaaS apps and content via Citrix Workspace app, creating the first unified digital workspace for business.
Citrix Workspace gives users secure, single sign-on (SSO) access to all the applications and content in an intuitive and digital workspace that delivers a consistent and unified experience across all devices – allowing users to start work at home on their tablet, continue to work on their smartphone during their commute, and complete work on their desktop or laptop in the office. Citrix has added integration between Slack and Secure Mail, allowing users to convert email messages into Slack conversations and to send Slack messages directly from Secure Mail.
Enabling choice without increasing complexity
Citrix Cloud services enable cloud portability, giving customers the tools and insights to pursue their individualised cloud strategy with confidence, and the flexibility to easily move workloads between clouds as business needs evolve. Customers can now run their Citrix workloads on any cloud – AWS, Azure, Google and Oracle or private. Citrix automated image management and provisioning technologies make it easy to move these workloads from customers’ data centres to the cloud of your choice, supporting a wide range of different platforms from bare metal and virtualised infrastructure to cloud. Because Citrix has architected its entire stack on a common platform, customers can easily move workloads from their datacenter to the cloud of their choice and back again, as needed, bringing cloud portability within reach of the enterprise. Citrix will also provide day-one support for Windows Server 2019 to deliver virtualised apps with XenApp.
Citrix is also enabling choice of devices from a single endpoint management solution. Citrix Endpoint Management provides management for the broadest set of devices from wearables to IoT devices like Alexa for Business, and Raspberry Pi-powered workspace hubs from Citrix partners NComputing and Viewsonic. Companies need a modern way to manage this device diversity – it’s not just about phones and laptops anymore. Regardless of the device used, Citrix can securely manage all endpoints across the enterprise.
Security approach
New and ever-increasing threats require modern approaches to security that enhance productivity, not hamper it. Organisations need a holistic approach to security that adapts to the way people work, rather than forcing users to work within security restrictions. Citrix’s expanded security approach unifies Citrix Networking portfolio with Citrix Unified Endpoint Management and Citrix Analytics to deliver a secure digital perimeter that surrounds the user, apps and network for greater visibility and control. The Citrix secure digital perimeter allows IT and CISOs centralised security policy controls that are applied dynamically at any access point to minimise and hide attack surfaces that live beyond the data centre, across various devices, apps and content distributed on-premises and in hybrid and multi-cloud networks.
Citrix workspace networking portfolio is underpinned by Citrix Analytics. Whether a company is securing cloud apps, files and data, mobile or desktop apps, Citrix Analytics will provide visibility into company-wide user and entity behavior, system security, performance and operations, and simplify IT infrastructure. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect anomalous behavior and potential threats, Citrix Analytics can provide actionable intelligence from the information gathered via its cloud services and on premises products to help customers proactively identify and manage internal and external threats.
Citrix unifies the experience of SaaS, web, mobile and virtual apps with Citrix Workspace and has now expanded its ability to securely and centrally-manage these applications with Citrix Access Control. Citrix Access Control provides SSO capabilities to all SaaS, web and Citrix virtualised apps. It provides granular policy controls like watermarking, restricted copy-paste and can prevent printing. In addition, Citrix Access Control together with Citrix Analytics provides advanced user behaviour analytics, which helps to redirect risky internet browsing activity to a cloud-based virtual browser completely isolated from the corporate network with zero configuration required on the endpoint. This allows enterprises to balance business-oriented browsing with enhanced security.
“Maintaining productivity in an era where new workstyles and applications are dynamically and increasingly complex requires a new approach to delivering the user’s workspace, one that is focused on people, and how they use technology to get their jobs done. The Citrix Workspace is the first unified digital workspace for organisations that simplifies access to apps and data, creating a consistent experience across devices, and that is responsive and adaptive wherever a person is working,” said PJ Hough, Chief Product Officer, Citrix.
