The IT Melting Pot!

Citrix have released a couple of good blog posts on the new version of XenMobile 10:

Ten Benefits XenMobile 10 Offers To Channel Partners

XenMobile 10 marks the simplification milestone in our Enterprise Mobility Management journey.  Today, at Summit Las Vegas we are happy to announce the release of XenMobile 10.  XenMobile brings great benefits for both end users and IT administrators.

And here are ten benefits I can think of, from the top of my head that XenMobile 10 brings to our Citrix channel partners:

1. Better for Business:
   With the 20+ enterprise workflow efficiencies and design improvements that enable business users’ productivity on smartphones and tablets, XenMobile is focused on empowering mobile users.  With Citrix’s dedicated focus on user experience, the Worx apps and the Worx Gallery apps are designed to enable enterprise user workflows.
2. Enterprise-grade Product: XenMobile architecture is built for complex and sophisticated network topologies that exist in a typical large enterprise with its offices and users across the world.
3. Consolidated Architecture:  XenMobile 10 integrates the mobile device and application management consoles along with some NetScaler Gateway controls, into one product.  This consolidated architecture in this release makes it easy to use and deploy thereby ensuring our channel partners remain successful in their service engagements.
4. Intuitive Dashboard:XenMobile 10 brings a fresh look with the redesign of the administrative dashboard.  Channel partners can now manage and deploy XenMobile with a complete understanding of the deployments.
5. Faster Deployment: With the consolidated architecture for mobile device and application management along with the additional controls for NetScaler Gateway, the deployment time with XenMobile 10 is reduced by 75%!
6. Mobile User Workflows: True Mobility is about enabling the user not with a bunch of applications, but with the applications that let the user get their job done without exhaustingly navigating through multiple apps.  XenMobile has always focused on enabling user workflows; XenMobile 10 now delivers additional enhancements to allow the end users remain productive without having to be tethered a specific device or a location.
7. Automation: We recently announced the automation of APNS Certificate Signing process with which partners can now renew the APNS certificates for their customers.  The concept of automation is now extended to ISV partners’ self-verification of their wrapped applications and a self-service portal for end users that allows them to location, track and wipe their lost/stolen device themselves.
8. Faster Migration: With the migration tools that will be released for XenMobile 10, channel partners can easily migrate the existing XenMobile customers.
9. Security and best-in-class User Experience: Traditionally, security and user experience of products never coexisted.  However, XenMobile is proud to bear an exception for this norm by delivering an end user experience that is Better For Business without compromising security.  XenMobile offers end-to-end FIPS compliant solution for mobility.
10. Specialization Benefits:…

Continue to read this blog post here!

And here is another goo one:

“User experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience.”  There, I said it ten times fast.  How many times a day do you hear someone referring to user experience when talking about technology and business? I think we are all well aware that a great user experience is critical when it comes to mobile adoption for business.  All of the apps, features and functionality available to a business user from a desktop need to be available to them, securely, from the mobile device.  The mobile user doesn’t want “mobility” to slow them down.  At Citrix we get it.  We are probably one of the only companies to have a customer experience executive reporting directly to the CEO.  With XenMobile, which includes a home grown suite of integrated productivity apps, Citrix can boast about an industry leading user experience for EMM.

What about the IT administrator’s experience?  With multiple layers of technology, EMM can quickly become complex and difficult to manage.  Mobile Device Management, Mobile Application Management, Mobile Content Management, Productivity Apps, and Secure Mobile Gateways in aggregate can create configuration and deployment nightmares for IT.  Integration between the layers of the EMM stack is critical to a great IT experience.  Citrix is unique in our ability to offer industry-leading solutions at every layer of the EMM stack.  So while Xenmobile 9 was primarily focused on end-user experience, XenMobile 10 targets an improved IT experience.

Here are a Few Examples:

• XenMobile 10 includes a completely redesigned admin console for MDM and MAM with additional controls for NetScaler gateway.  The result is a 75% reduction in deployment times.  In many cases MDM can be up and running in 15 minutes.
• IT workflow improvements allow IT admins to create a single policy or security profile and apply it to multiple device platforms at the same time.  Previously, a policy or profile would need to be repetitively created for each platform.  The result is 50% time savings for policy configurations and common tasks.
• Would peace of mind fall under the category of IT experience?  I think it does.  With XenMobile 10, Citrix can an offer an end-to-end FIPS compliant solution for EMM with the addition of FIPS compliant connections between the network (NetScaler) and XenMobile Server and between the XenMobile Server and the XenMobile admin console.  With complete security IT can rest easy at night.
• In 2015 I predict that “Automation” will be a big buzzword associated with EMM.  I already mentioned how complex a multi-vendor EMM solution can become.  XenMobile can offer a single-vendor solution with a strategy of automating processes wherever and whenever possible.  We’ve already started with automated APNS certificate signing service, automated ISV partner self-verification for wrapped applications and a new self-service portal which allows users to locate, lock and wipe a lost or stolen device themselves.  While IT resources are usually limited and scarce, Citrix is working to provide relief through numerous automations within the XenMobile platform and across all Citrix product familes.  Stay tuned for some exciting updates in this area.

The initial feedback on XenMobile 10 shows that these new improvements are going to be great news for customers AND partners.

User experience has always been a key differentiator for XenMobile and as expected, we have updates in XenMobile 10 for end-users as well.  The Worx family of integrated productivity apps (WorxHome, WorxMail, WorxWeb, WorxNotes, WorxEdit, ShareFile and WorxDesktop) received 20+ design improvements resulting in more efficient and improved mobile workflows.

Here are a Few Examples:

• Priority email handling.  With WorxMail you can mark emails as high, medium or low priority before sending just like you would from your desktop email application.
• Set calendar events as private.  For those of us who share our calendar with others you can now set a meeting or appointment as private directly from the mobile device.
• Improved autosuggest lists bring most commonly used names to the top.  If you work for a big company with 200 guys named Mike this is going to save you so time.
• New note taking features including notebook Grid View, turning an entire email into a note with a single click and the option of storing notes in Exchange or ShareFile.

All of these improvements and enhancements to the client side applications result in more efficient and productive mobile business users who can create their own workflows.  A mobile workflow is defined as a combination of tasks that usually require the user to navigate across multiple applications.

For example, the integration of WorxNotes and ShareFile creates a unique workflow for document scanning and storage. The WorxNotes application allows the mobile user to create notes from text, images, audio and video files and automatically sync those files to ShareFile. With the high quality optics of many mobile devices today, it’s common to use the built-in camera as a scanner. With WorxNotes, the images always remain part of a secure note that is automatically synced to ShareFile for secure storage and retrieval from any desktop or mobile device. The image is never saved to the device camera roll.  This is just one example of workflows that can be created with the integrated family of Worx productivity applications.

Enterprise Mobility Management is tricky because as a vendor we want to be able to deliver solutions that 1. Provides a great user experience, 2. …

Continue reading this blog post here!

//Richard