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Citrix Nails Its Enterprise Mobility Strategy

I have been very pleased with the strategy, execution and the road map that Citrix has developed around Enterprise Mobility. With the announcement of XenMobile MDM and the Mobile Solutions bundle, I can very easily say that the Citrix solution is the most complete and feature-rich offering on the market today.

XenMobile MDM is simply a name change for Zenprise, which Citrix acquired a few months earlier. I expected Citrix to simply change the "Z" to "X" and keep the name, but I guess Citrix marketing did not find that as amusing. That is not the only change that occurred: A new version of "Zenprise" also accompanies this release, and XenMobile MDM now brings it to version 8.0.1.

Many customers and colleagues have asked me why Citrix acquired an MDM provider -- what are the value-adds and isn't the world moving towards MAM anyway? To answer, we have to make a clear distinction between the use cases. I agree and concur that for BYOD initiatives, MAM is a better, cleaner way of doing this things and that MDM is not the ideal solution.

That being said, there are plenty of use cases where MDM is the only solution that makes sense and I will give you real-world examples. Have you heard of the "Belly" card? It is a customer recognition and rewards program from a company HQ'ed in Chicago that offers merchants a locked down iPad for display in their place of business. Customers can come in and scan their mobile phones on the iPad provided and after a certain number of check-ins they are offered a reward for their loyalty. In this case, belly would have very little use for MAM; they need an MDM solution to manage the thousands of iPads they have deployed.

Another example: United Airlines and American Airlines allow customers to use mobile devices in the cabin to purchase goods in-flight. Obviously, the airlines don't want the flight attendants to use their own device for this, MDM shines again here.

Finally, what about financial institutions that want to continue to issue corporate-managed devices of different flavors? It'd be for security reasons, obviously. In this case, MDM shines.

When I see bloggers and analysts disqualify MDM, they are not thinking beyond BYOD, where the business world could have a use case built around an application they issue on a mobile device.

Did Citrix strike gold with its acquisition of Zenprise? I will say this much: It was one of the best acquisitions the company has ever made. The natural follow-up question is, what about CloudGateway? And my answer is, it is the glue that holds everything together and is the most important product in the Citrix solution today. Everything will go through CloudGateway moving forward and at version 2.5 has the following features:

  • Enterprise app store with identity management capabilities for a single sign-on like experience
  • Windows Applications and Desktops through XenApp and XenDesktop
  • Mobile applications integration, provisioning, etc.
  • SaaS applications integration, provisioning, etc
  • Integration with Citrix ShareFile for enterprise DropBox functionality

CloudGateway also has a connector for Citrix Podio, and here I'll be critical of Citrix the same way I'm critical of VMware for not integrating SocialCast. Why Citrix doesn't make Podio the workspace that users initiate all their activities from is a mystery to me, so I invite Citrix to consider Podio the workspace of the future with integration points for GoToMeeting, ShareFile and tabs for Mobile, Windows SaaS and other resources.

The XenMobile MDM and Mobile Solutions Bundle suite also introduce a sandboxed e-mail and Web browser capability. If you have been following my blogs, you probably know that one of the biggest security challenges for mobile devices is the native e-mail and Web browsers. It's hard or impossible in some cases to wrap policies around these two applications, and any solution that does not provide an alternative sandboxed option is not complete.

In the final analysis, I am very happy with the progress Citrix has been making on the road to Enterprise Mobility Management and there are many companies that are already iintegrating their NAS solutions with XenMobile, Cisco ISE being one and ForeScout being another. My one and only concern about Citrix is that it does not price itself out of the market -- Citrix tends to stick a hefty price tag on these solutions and I sincerely hope this time these solutions are priced to win because the technology is definitely capable. Your thoughts?

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/04/2013 at 1:41 PM


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Reader Comments:

Fri, Mar 8, 2013 Jim Haviland voxmobile.com

At Vox Mobile we partner with all the leading MDM platforms (including AW, MI, Good M360 and Zprise) and have a significant number of successful installations of each. Elias, I think you did an excellent job summing up the situation. We have been supporting "personal device programs" for years before it was called BYOD and we see almost no one going to a pure BYOD approach. In fact we have seen a number of clients try it and then pull back. Having a mixture of MDM, MAM, and security management options is likely to be most enterprise's prescription. The one point you may have missed is that we see traditional virtualization being marginalized as "windows apps through the connector on laptops" are converted to apps on mobile devices. The diverse solution stack is clearly a good play for Citrix.

Thu, Mar 7, 2013 Fishforsure Dallas, TX

With 125 MDM companies in the market, I am SURE that Zenprise was far from the cheapest option... and unless you either worked at Zenprise or sit on their board as a VC, you have no idea if they were out of money. The comment about 2 revs behind the leaders... laughable. I guess that is why Gartner has them listed in the leader's quadrant. It looks to me like you're either a disgruntled former Zenprise employee, or currently employed by a competitor.

Thu, Mar 7, 2013 Scott HOUSTON

Travis- Your bias is a bit over the top. To say Zenprise was out of funding and this was a fire sale shows a clearly lopsided view of the space. The differences been all the companies you mentioned was minimal with each of them leapfrogging the other as releases came out. As someone who evaluated all the options and supports thousands of mobile devices it was clear they were not “2 revs behind”. We did an exhaustive review of all the players you mentioned and really ended up making the selection based on easy of use Zenprise based on the quality of the team not features (as there was almost no difference). Zenprise issued significant updates quarterly and routinely had features and functionality ahead of their competition. In fact we had the next version in our test environment as the acquisition was announced. All of this being said, the real story is not the past, but the future. As Citrix is able to leverage their wide array of solutions (NetScaler, ShareFile, XenDesktop, XenApp and many others), I believe you will find that XenMobile excels in and exponential way as compared to MobileIron, AirWatch and MAAS360. As a customer we are already seeing the benefits of this only 60 days out from the acquisition. It is clear Citrix intends to integrate this feature set and is doing so rapidly. The key is not the past and who was winning the rat race last year, the key is the future and who will win the race now. Given the power of Citrix as a company and their products my prediction is that in a year it will be more than clear who won the war. I agree completely with Elias. Who will be the next one to be acquired? They will be the one that XenMobile will be in competition with going forward.

Tue, Mar 5, 2013 Travis

Although, I am in the mobile market my company and our position is well established and not in jeopardy. You look at the big three(MobileIron, Air-Watch, and MaaS360) in comparison to where Zenprise stood in the market and they were failing to compare. MaaS360 would have been the only other option for acquisition but they do not support an on-premise solution which I am sure was a requirement Citrix had when they began their research. Both MobileIron and Air-Watch also would have been valued at 2-4x as much as Zenprise so Citrix choose to go with a viable option to get their foot into the market and then I am expecting they will put forth the development resources over the next 3-6months to catch up. From someone who is on the frontlines of the MDM battle right now, there are 3 big differentiators. Every MDM company can lock&wipe and do the same things on iOS because those APIs have been freely available for two years. The first big differentiator right now is the company itself. You are selling security software and your company is your badge of trust. No one wants to trust their corporate information and security to a company that was just built to flip for a quick return for investors because it may compromise their security after the acquisition. When investing in software security you tend to steer clear of the unknowns. The second is Android. Like I mentioned iOS MDM features are universal. Yes, each company adds their flair behind them such as a content management application or a secure browser application but for the most part that is the truth. Android is most fragmented market ever created and it makes development and integration to that platform far from universal. This is where strong partnerships with OEMs such as Samsung or HTC come into play to give the MDM companies abilities they otherwise wouldnt have. Also, it comes down to how many development resources you want to invest into that fragmented pit of devices. And lastly, it is all of the back-end integrations and capabilities to complement your existing IT infrastructure.(CA integration, content repository integration, ect.) Now each company has their own "creative" spin on marketing but those are the facts right now in the market. (I disregarded Good Technology from this conversation because their platform is built very differently from the above mentioned because they were founded and maintain being an application based solution inside their "Good" container app rather than integrating into the device itself)

Tue, Mar 5, 2013 Elias Khnaser Chicago

Travis, you sound a bit disgruntled, do you work for a competitor to Zenprise? first, i did not romanticize any features, i actually did not go into any details on features, i simply covered the acquisition and mentioned the sandboxed email and web browser, i ams ure you would agree there are plenty more features. my article was about the strategy and the execution not going into the weeds of the features but your claim that they were 2 revs behind is a bit of a strecth, and from a priduct perspective Zenprise was a very respectable MDM solution. It feelsl as though they did not acquire the company you were hoping they would an das a result you are a bit disapointed, you should instead focus your attention on making sure VMware acquires the company you want ;) Eli

Mon, Mar 4, 2013 Travis

It is interesting that the appealing features you romanticize about Citrix's new MDM platform are not only common among the big three pure-play MDM companies but most of them are several releases behind the market. In a market that is averaging 2 major releases a year, Zenprise was out of VC funding as well as the ability to truly innovate for the last 9months. Citrix didn't acquire Zenprise because they were the best solution out there. Citrix acquired Zenprise because they were the cheapest viable option to gain a new product to their line. Does Citrix have the ability and resources to develop on the Zenprise offering to build a strong comprehensive solution for the needs of this enterprise mobile ecosystem? Of course, but they are behind the MDM/MAM market which is beginning to thin out the top companies from the late comers.

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