Archive
Finally – Citrix Workspace Cloud is GA! – #Citrix, #WorkSpaceCloud, #DaaS, #SaaS, @EnvokeIT
This is something that we at EnvokeIT have been trying out for quite a while and really enjoy, it’s a great service that will simplify a lot for many service providers and customers. Contact us at EnvokeIT if you have any questions or if you need assistance on your journey to the cloud!
Now your business can take advantage of Citrix Workspace Cloud, the fastest and easiest way for IT to enable business productivity with secure apps, data, device management and more.
I’m pleased to announce the general availability of Citrix Workspace Cloud, the industry’s simplest way to build and deliver a complete workspace without compromise.
Now, you can easily combine virtual apps and desktops, mobile apps and device policies and data – securely delivered from any cloud or infrastructure you choose – whether on-premises, off-premises or both in a hybrid model.
Workspace Cloud is Revolutionary
Over the past 18 months, the team has been busy engaging with customers, partners, industry analysts, media, Citrix Technology Professionals, ISVs and alliance partners around the world as we built Workspace Cloud.
The general reaction has been consistent: Workspace Cloud is unlike anything else and comprehensively addresses the biggest challenges in workspace management.
The cloud-based management and control plane accelerates deployments. The choice of infrastructure locations provides the flexibility partners and customer’s demand, and the comprehensive set of workspace services that are always up to date ensure you can meet the broad set of IT use cases.
A single unified, global, and multi-tenant SaaS platform to create complete workspaces
People do their best work when they have immediate access to their work resources – the people, apps, and files they need at any specific moment or context.
While other vendors offer a ‘workspace’ that is nothing more than virtual desktops offered in their own cloud, Workspace Cloud makes it easy to deliver a people-centric, modern workspace located on-premises, off-premises or both in a hybrid model.
Easily compose workspaces containing apps, desktops, mobile and data. Workspace management allows you to use existing corporate Active Directory domains to add, remove or change the resources from one place once and on-demand – everyone and every resource in the workspace is updated.
Stay in control and retain choice for your infrastructure and cloud selections
Want to run your contractor applications out of Amazon, your productivity apps in Azure to be near their Office 365 data, and desktops on-premises? No problem. Workspace Cloud provides the only solution that allows you to select the best infrastructure combinations based on economics, performance, existing capacity, sovereignty, and expertise. This means the selection can be made on a per-service basis. This choice extends not only to your applications and desktops, but also to your data.
Workspace Cloud accelerates deployment and management through a SaaS-based control plane and securely communicates with your infrastructure through a simple cloud connector. Driven by a simple stateless, zero-touch management architecture. After a simple installation the connector is ready to provision resources, enumerate users from Microsoft Active Directory domains, and launch session requests.
Comprehensive portfolio of workspace services available as a subscription
Workspace Cloud subscriptions contains services that address the core use cases customers face every day and are available today. Start with one offering but easily add more based upon your expanding business needs.
The core services we’re announcing today include:
- Applications and Desktops Service – Deliver secure virtual apps and desktops to any device, and leave the product installation, setup, configuration, upgrades and monitoring to Citrix based on industry-leading XenApp and XenDesktop technology.
- Mobility Service – Provide cloud-based, comprehensive enterprise mobility management (EMM) — including mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management, and enterprise-grade productivity apps — for a secure user experience on BYOD or corporate devices based on XenMobile technology.
- Secure Document Service – Meet the mobility and collaboration needs of employees and the data security requirements of the enterprise with this secure enterprise file sync and sharing service based on ShareFile technology.
- Lifecycle Management Service – Accelerate and automate the design, deployment, and ongoing management of Citrix enterprise workloads with comprehensive lifecycle management. The service provides standardized, repeatable automation technology with a catalog of blueprints – assembled scripts that capture configurations, settings and other complex details into a single repeatable solution. Read more about this new technology here.
Continue reading more here!
//Richard
#XenMobile Mobility promotion from #Citrix – #EMM, #BYOD, #XenDesktop
XenMobile mobile device management (MDM) or enterprise mobile management (EMM) capabilities for the price of Software Maintenance!
Personally I wonder if this is a move triggered by VMware’s acquisition of AirWatch where Citrix now is kind of pushing it’s MDM solution out the door to really get some more market, and at the same time push VMware to give their new MDM capabilities away together with Horizon View…
This is an interesting and good action, thank you Citrix!
XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion
Promotion effective From January 31, 2014 to September 30, 2014
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The XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion is a limited-time promotion that offers new or existing XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum customers with perpetual licenses current on Subscription Advantage (SA) the ability to receive FREE XenMobile MDM edition licenses or get 20% off XenMobile Enterprise licenses with the purchase of first year Software Maintenance for all licenses obtained via this promotion. For either XenMobile promotion options, the maximum number of discounted licenses customers can purchase is based on the total number of XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum licenses owned. XenMobile MDM edition provides key device-level security capabilities for users accessing XenApp and XenDesktop desktops and apps on mobile devices. The mobile device management (MDM) solution lets you:
XenMobile Enterprise edition supports the next step in your EMM strategy by complementing the device-level security capabilities of XenMobile MDM edition with app-level security features. These include:
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Continue reading here!
//Richard
#XenApp 7.5 is launching! – #Citrix, #HSD, #DaaS, #VDI
Wow… this is really interesting and “weird” I must say…
XenApp is back! 🙂
And of course AppDNA is in there as well to simplify software/application management on this platform.
Description
New Citrix XenApp 7.5 makes it simple to deliver any Windows app to an increasingly mobile workforce, while leveraging the cost saving and elasticity of hybrid clouds and the security of mobile device management. Learn more at http://www.citrix.com/xenapp
Hear more about it in this video!
The video above was removed because of that it was accidentally published too early.. but you can find it on YouTube here:
//Richard
VMware acquires AirWatch! – #EMM, #MDM, #BYOD, #VMware, #AirWatch
This is really interesting! I’m not that surprised though, it was about time VMware did something!
I must agree with a lot of people who have written about this, they are really going for a leader! So they mean business! Will be fun to see how well the can integrate this into their offerings and how that will look like.
VMware buys AirWatch for $1.54 billion, acquires mobility strategy
VMware will acquire AirWatch, a mobile device management company, in a $1.17 billion cash deal that will give the virtualization software provider a play in mobility. VMware will also pay $365 million in installment payments and unvested stock options.
Mobile device management has been a hot sector desperately in need of consolidation given there are more than 100 vendors. Large enterprises increasingly want mobile device management put together with content management and collaboration. VMware’s acquisition follows IBM’s purchase of FiberLink and Citrix’s acquisition of Xenprise in 2013.
VMware’s spin is that AirWatch will give it a foothold in mobility as well as its end-user computing strategy, which revolves around desktop virtualization and delivering enterprise apps to tablets and smartphones.
Here’s Gartner’s Magic Quadrant on the sector.
According to VMware, AirWatch will continue to be led by CEO John Marshall. AirWatch will be lumped into VMware’s end-user computing group, which… continue reading here!
VMWare Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire AirWatch
Acquisition will Provide Customers with the Most Complete Solution to Manage Users, Devices and Applications across Desktop and Mobile Environments.
PALO ALTO, Calif., January 22, 2014 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, and AirWatch today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which VMware will acquire AirWatch, the leading provider of enterprise mobile management and security solutions. VMware will acquire AirWatch for approximately $1.175B in cash and approximately $365M of installment payments and assumed unvested equity. The AirWatch team will continue to report to founder and chief executive officer John Marshall as part of VMware’s End-User Computing group, led by Sanjay Poonen, EVP and GM. Alan Dabbiere, AirWatch’s cofounder and chairman, will be overseeing a new AirWatch operating board which will report to Pat Gelsinger, VMware chief executive officer.
“AirWatch provides best-in-class, secure, enterprise-mobile management to thousands of businesses around the world,” said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. “With this acquisition VMware will add a foundational element to our end-user computing portfolio that will… continue reading here!
//Richard
How To: #XenMobile #MDM 8.5 Deployment Part 3: Policies – #Citrix
And here U have part 3 of Adams great blog post series!
In this 3rd part of my 7 part series on XenMobile MDM 8.5 we will focus on policies. Policies within MDM allow you to control a multitude of features on your end users mobile devices, including: WiFi, Email, VPN, Location Services, most all functionality of the device (camera, FaceTime, etc), AppStore access, etc. Most configuration variations you do to control and limit/restrict/configure your end users devices will be done from this tab. This tab is also the location where we can create some automated actions that include notifying your users when they have fallen out of compliance.
If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:
- How To: XenMobile MDM 8.5 Deployment Part 1: Installation
- How To: XenMobile MDM 8.5 Deployment Part 2: Basic Configuration
In this article I was to cover a “base” set of policy configurations that will give you a feel of how the policies work in general. By no means does this cover the breadth of what you can do with MDM, but it at least gives you a glimpse.
I want to accomplish the following in this article:
- Set a passcode policy on the device
- Block iCloud from syncing documents
- Preconfigure a WiFi network on my device (so that your users could come into the office with WiFi already configured and never have been given the password)
- Blacklist Dropbox, Box, and SkyDrive applications
- Notify the user their device as Out of Compliance (OoC) if those apps are installed
- Mark the device as OoC in the dashboard
.Configure a Passcode Policy
How To: #XenMobile #MDM 8.5 Deployment Part 1 and 2: Installation – via @AdamInTheCloud
Wow, it’s like Adam read my mind, I’m doing the same kind of blog post series but for a XenMobile MAM deployment! Will post part 2 of the MAM series later tonight (once it’s done, waiting on some StoreFront issues to solve and I’m getting there!)
But in the meantime have a look at this great series by Adam! Great job Adam!!!
How To: XenMobile MDM 8.5 Deployment Part 1: Installation
n late 2012 Citrix announced they had purchased a 7-year-old startup company called Zenprise that was a hot player in the mobile device security market. Up until that time, Citrix was positioning for that sector with its CloudGateway Enterprise product and focusing mostly on apps and data management..not really the device. Zenprise helped them flesh out their offering, which is now known as “XenMobile”. Although it’s gone through a few iterations it has finally reached a final “form” if you will of three editions: MDM, App, and Enterprise.
The purpose of this article series will be to walk through the installation and basic setup of the MDM (Mobile Device Management) Edition which focuses almost exclusively on managing the device, and not necessarily so much the data or apps. Although it is capable of application pushes and the like… a feature comparison can be found on Citrix’ website HERE. I encourage you to view that. One major difference to note is MDM does not sandbox apps/data, but App Edition does, and Enterprise Edition can.
In researching this product for some internal training we are currently going through it became pretty apparent there is very little information out there on it, and if there is its unfortunately outdated because the product has been rapidly evolving over the first half of the year. In this series of blog articles I will go over how to deploy a single instance of XenMobile 8.5 MDM on an internal network, configure basic policies and rules, and apply them to your devices.
If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:
This, unfortunately is the most boring part of MDM which is the install…but I would be remiss by not going over it for some of you that “have to see” it. So lets get to it so we can get on to the more exciting stuff!
First: Pre-req’s. All of this is straight from eDocs, I’m not reinventing the wheel here.
- MDM 8.5 needs to go on a 2008 R2 or 2012 server.
- Setup an active directory service account and make it a local admin on the MDM server
- Disable IPv6 (not via registry, just uncheck the box)
- UAC disabled
- Firewall disabled (this is my preference..I disable server firewalls but you’re welcome to do as you wish)
- Your service account needs permissions creator/owner/read/write on your SQL server. I will not be using PostgreSQL.
- SQL 2005/2008/R2/2012 in your environment (Reference Architecture recommends SQL for production deployments, not PostgreSQL. See HERE)
- Java SE 7 Update 11 (dk-7u4-windows-x64.exe) installed on the server
- Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) USJP 7 on the serverExternal DNS record such as mobile.mydomain.com
- To install the Java Cryptography Extension
- Install Java SE 7u11
- Open the JCE zip file and copy local_policy.jar and US_export_policy.jar to your computer desktop.
- Navigate to the folder /java/jdk1.7.0_x/jre/lib/security and copy the files from Step 2 to this folder.
- To install the Java Cryptography Extension
- Obtain an Apple….
Continue reading part 1 here and part 2 here!
//Richard
10 Mobile Device Management Leaders That Help IT Control #BYOD, #Gartner, #Citrix, #MDM
Consumers love their smartphones and tablets, so it should come as no surprise that they want to use their devices at work. The pressure to develop and deploy a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy is on and coming from every direction, including the ‘C’ suite of executives who tend to be especially keen on using smartphones and tablets for their work.
Managing devices in a BYOD environment is no small feat, and the right mobile device management (MDM) product is a key component in making it work. Here are 10 leading MDM vendors in the market today, drawn from the leaders and visionaries in Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Device Management Software.
Magic Quadrant
Are you, or wanna become a Mobility or Networking guru? – #EnvokeIT, #Citrix, #XenMobile, #BYOD
Then you might be the one that we’re looking for!!
EnvokeIT is expanding and are looking for people with the following areas of expertise:
Mobility
Are you currently working within the mobility area or with any of the major Mobile Device Management products out there (MDM, MAM, MIM etc.)? Then we’d love to talk to you! We strongly believe in this area and are focusing on it and would like to have you onboard on this journey! And of course we’re focusing on the Citrix product portfolio but are mainly looking for people with experience within the area and not exclusively on the Citrix XenMobile/Zenprise products. And Enterprise Mobility Management is here to stay, it’s the future work-/play-ground!
Networking
Wow, this is an area that is exploding! And I must agree that I’m not the expert within this area, but there are so many new capabilities being developed right now and we and our customers see the business value here. We’re talking about everything from traditional old school SSL VPN to supporting the latest mobility, application and cloud delivery solutions out there! So if you have experience on the Citrix NetScaler product or are a current Cisco, F5 or Riverbed person; contact us to hear more on what we have to offer!
Contact us – EnvokeIT (form page),or if you rather contact me or Mathias directly:
Richard Egenas – CTO
Email: richard-at-envokeit-.-com
Phone: +46 (0) 768 81 01 62
Mathias Törnblom – CEO
Email: mathias-at-envokeit-.-com
Phone: +46 (0) 8 587 633 10
Thanks for taking your time reading this and I hope that you will join us on this journey!! 🙂
//Richard
XenMobile product overview… and It’s nice! via @BasvanKaam – #BYOD, #MDM, #Citrix
Wow! I must say that Bas van Kaam has done a great wrap-up here! I highly recommend you to read this blog post!!! 🙂
It was only about a month ago when I was writing my Blog about the CloudGateway that I wondered which route Citrix would take now that they acquired Zenprise, well… here it is… XenMobile, another Xen sibling sees the light! Lets jump right in…
I had the opportunity to make use of one of Citrix’s demo environments to have a closer look at MDM, which is an awesome way to explore new and existing products by the way, if your company is a Citrix partner and has access I definitely recommend having a look. Besides that I used the Citrix E-Docs website as well as Citrix.com to find as much information as possible.
The main focus of this article will be on XenMobile MDM as the Mobile Solutions Bundle (one of the two editions available) focuses primarily on the CloudGateway which I already discussed in one of my previous blogs.
MDM?
MDM stand for Mobile Device Management and it’s just that! Here’s what Citrix has to say about it: As per Citrix: XenMobile MDM is a robust mobile device management solution that delivers role-based management, configuration, and security for both corporate and employee-owned devices. Upon user device enrollment, IT can provision policies and apps to devices automatically, blacklist or whitelist apps, detect and protect against jailbroken or rooted devices, and selectively wipe a device that is lost, stolen, or out of compliance. Users can use any device they choose, while IT can ensure compliance of corporate assets and secure corporate content on the device.
Editions
There are two editions: XenMobile MDM and the Mobile Solutions Bundle. XenMobile MDM primarily focuses on (hardware) device management, more on it’s extensive feature set shortly. Every major platform is supported including: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Microsoft Windows 8. It includes the XenMobile Secure Mobile Gateway (SMG) and XenMobile SharePoint Data Leak Prevention (DLP) as well as the XenMobile Mobile Service Provider (ZSM) and the XenMobile Remote Support Application Toolset.
#XenMobile, #MobileSolutions – Is this what we’ve been waiting for? – #Citrix, #ZenPrise, #BYOD
Ok, so Citrix has now presented their new offering after merging Zenprise into their product portfolio. And is this what you have been waiting for?
My personal answer to that is probably yes, now you have all the capabilities (almost) out there to get your BYOx program/strategy and architecture in place or if you just want to add additional capabilities to your existing service offerings.
I must say though that the packaging is compelling and VERY interesting!
Citrix Mobile Solutions Bundle
The Citrix Mobile Solutions Bundle, which is comprised of XenMobile MDMand CloudGateway, offers a complete enterprise mobility management solution that enables IT to manage and secure devices, apps, and data.
XenMobile MDM Edition
XenMobile MDM Edition offers market leading mobile device management capabilities that deliver role-based management, configuration and security of corporate and employee-owned devices.
What I’d like to see is a roadmap where Citrix becomes an even more complete provider of technology in the Mobility segment. I still believe that Mobility is not only about smartphones and tablets and all the apps that you shall deliver to those devices and non-managed and non-corporate owned devices. There is still a need to provide device management of corporate assets that are not smartphones and tablets! And why should you have to implement another device management service/product for those.
So please Citrix = add Windows 7/8, OS X and Linux device capabilities as well in your almost complete Enterprise Mobile Management offering!
The offering is of course also today an early release where the former Zenprise product and CloudGateway is provided under the same marketing and price bundle but I’m waiting for when we have one (1) enterprise app store! And all capabilities from one technical architecture and product that you enable each capability on a need basis and are licensed accordingly.
But this is a great step for Citrix and I must say that I’m looking forward to see where this is going, I mean the feature set is pretty awesome!
Compare Features |
XenMobile MDM Edition |
Mobile Solutions Bundle |
| Enterprise MDM | ||
| Device management |  |
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| Configure policies | |
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| Security and compliance | |
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| Scalability and high-availability | |
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| Ease of administration | |
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| Provisioning and self-service enrollment | |
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| Enterprise integration | |
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| Monitor and support | |
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| Decommission devices | |
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| Secure email, browser and data sharing apps | ||
| @WorkMail | |
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| Email attachment encryption | |
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| @WorkWeb | |
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| ShareFile integration | |
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| Microsoft SharePoint integration | |
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| Mobile app containers | ||
| Mobile application management | |
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| MDX Vault | |
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| MDX Interapp | |
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| MDX Access | |
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| App wrapping | |
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| Unified app store | ||
| Enterprise app store | |
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| Follow-me apps | |
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| Identity management, single sign-on and scenario-based access control | ||
| Active Directory integration | |
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| Instant application and data provisioning | |
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| Single sign-on to apps and data | |
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| App requests | |
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| Instant application and data de-provisioning | |
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| Strong authentication | |
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| Secure remote access | |
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| Policy enforcement | |
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More information about the technologies have also been added to eDocs!
Of course also made their competition table:
Compare the Mobile Solutions Bundle to other enterprise mobility solutions
These are exciting times and I’m looking forward to play around with the whole bundle!
Read more about XenMobile/Mobile Solutions here!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 