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
#Citrix #XenMobile 10 news – #MDM, #MAM, #EMM, #Mobility, #BYOD
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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%!
- 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.
- 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.
- Faster Migration: With the migration tools that will be released for XenMobile 10, channel partners can easily migrate the existing XenMobile customers.
- 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.
- Specialization Benefits:…
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing – #ShareFile, #Citrix, #EMC, #Box, #Microsoft
It’s not new but it’s something that I discussed the other day with a customer; who is the market leader when it comes to “corporate dropbox” solutions for enterprises? Gartner did update the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing services/solutions and it’s a good read I must say.
You know I am a Citrix fan and a like their story and think that they from an overall virtual workplace offerings are far superior to the other players if you look across the stack from providing “legacy” services like Windows Apps and Desktop, Enterprise Mobility Management capabilities and all the network capabilities to provide the end-to-end service delivery. So it’s really nice to see that they are picking up in the ability to execute and are competing with EMC in the Leaders box!
I just hope that Citrix can stay int he lead and ensure that they price and capacity wise stay in synch with the up comers that are starting to offer really large storage capacity as a part of their cloud offerings. I still see that the capabilities and features of ShareFile are really great, and in some aspects others like Box, Microsoft and others are coming with nice features as well. So let’s see who will rule this market, but currently I think that ShareFile is a really strong player for enterprises but Microsoft will continue to grow and I just wish they add the additional features around security etc that enterprises often require so they can go into the bigger companies as well.
Source: Gartner (July 2014)
Market Definition/Description
This document was revised on 14 July 2014. The document you are viewing is the corrected version. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.
EFSS refers to a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enable individuals to synchronize and share documents, photos, videos and files across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. File sharing can be within the organization, as well as externally (e.g., with partners and customers) or on a mobile device as data sharing among apps. Security and collaboration support are critical capabilities of EFSS to address enterprise priorities.
Beyond file synchronization, sharing and access, EFSS offerings may include different levels of support for:
- Mobility, with native apps for a variety of mobile smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktops, as well as Web browser support.
- Security, for protection of data on the device, in transit and in cloud services (or servers), such as password protection, remote wipe, data encryption, data loss prevention, digital rights management (DRM), access tracking and reporting. Mature products ensure that files leaving the sharing location are DRM-encrypted and only readable by those authorized to access the data. Audit and compliance support are also present in complete products.
- Administration and management, including integration with an Active Directory and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) policy enforcement.
- Back-end server integration, e.g., with SharePoint and other corporate platforms. Integration is achieved through connectors (e.g., based on the Content Management Interoperability Services [CMIS] standard and APIs).
- Content manipulation, such as file editing, PDF annotations and note taking.
- Collaboration, such as cooperative editing on a shared document using change tracking and comments; and document-based workflow process support.
- Simplicity and usability, with optimized UIs and interactions, such as file drag and drop and file open in applications.
- Storage, i.e., cloud-based EFSS services often include cloud storage as part of the bundle to implement the EFSS repository. Software EFSS products, instead, may integrate with repositories on-premises or be implemented with a separate repository on-site.
Typical architectures for EFSS offerings are:
- Cloud: Corporate files are accessed via mobile devices, or shared and are stored in the provider’s cloud. Organizations that want to replace the personal cloud services adopted by employees with an enterprise-class alternative under IT control, while preserving the user experience and enhancing mobile collaboration, prefer the cloud method.
- On-premises: The remote access, synchronization and sharing component is deployed on-premises and integrates with corporate data repositories, without file replicas. This method is preferred by organizations under strict regulations about data storage.
- Hybrid: The user and device authentication, security and search mechanisms are implemented in the provider’s cloud. Files and documents are kept in their original location, or can be in third-party clouds. Organizations that want to simplify mobile users’ access to corporate data through the cloud, without creating data replicas in someone else’s cloud, prefer the hybrid method.
There are two types of EFSS offerings:
- Destinations — Stand-alone products with file sync and share as a core capability, which represents a new purchase for an organization.
- Extensions — File sync and share capabilities added, and wrapped around established products or applications — e.g., for collaboration, content management or storage. Organizations can use extensions as part of the broader platform (see “Destinations and Wraparounds Will Reshape the Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing Market”).
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#XenMobile and the #Citrix Mobile Workspaces Architecture – #BYOD
This is a great blog post by Christopher Campbell and good picture to show the overall capabilities and architecture of the Citrix offering!
You’ve heard us talk about Mobile Workspaces and if you’re a techie you’re probably wondering if Citrix really has the architectural components (a complete, comprehensive and fully integrated architecture) that can deliver any app and data to any user on any device over any network?
Well let’s first identify a few of the market leading technologies that make up the Citrix Mobile Workspaces solution:
- XenApp mobilizes and secures Windows apps on any device
- XenDesktop securely delivers virtual Windows desktops and apps on any device
- XenMobile manages and secures mobile, web and SaaS apps on mobile devices
- GoToMeeting empowers people to meet and collaborate with anyone, anywhere
- ShareFile shares and syncs corporate data securely from any location
- NetScaler optimizes and secures app delivery and on any network
- CloudPlatform orchestrates and provisions apps, desktops and IT services from any cloud
OK, OK. We know you have the products but do they really integrate?
Yes. Don’t believe me? Well as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. This is what the Mobile Workspace Architecture looks like.
OK. I get it. You have the architecture but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a seamless user experience.
Still don’t believe huh? Well this is what the user experience looks like.
XenMobile is a key ingredient in delivering a mobile workspace. Along with XenApp and XenDesktop it allows organizations to deliver on giving users access to any app from any device. In fact, if you’re an existing XenApp or XenDesktop customer, XenMobile seamlessly plugs into your existing architecture.
If you’re a XenDesktop or XenApp customer this is what your environment probably looks like.
Now this is what you need to enable EMM for BYO and COPE (Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled) devices and add that MDM, MAM, Secure Email, Secure Data…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Almost perfect.. #ShareFile StorageZones on Azure is now generally available! – #Citrix, #Azure
This is a great addition I must say, but some things are missing!
One thing that I’m missing is the full integration with Azure storage containers! You still have to specify a temp/cache storage location that today ShareFile controller requires to be on a CIFS share when you have multiple controllers. And if you put the controller up in Azure as well, how do you then get that CIFS share and make it highly available? There is no CIFS exposure directly from the Azure storage, you have to setup a couple of VM’s in Azure, do something like DFS to expose is.. and then all of a sudden you have a whole file service to manage there as well.. and to monitor and all of a sudden you need AD and monitoring and reporting of it.. phuuu…
So I hope that in next version we can specify an Azure storage container for that cache/temp storage as well! 😉
The other thing I’d really like to see is NetScaler support in Azure, so that we could do proper AAA/CS/LB of the controllers in Azure as well so that we can get a simple and fully cloud based service in Azure! 🙂
BYOD and a growing global workforce are generating demand for instant access to data, offline productivity and seamless collaboration from anywhere. Organizations are challenged with reconciling these forces with leveraging existing investments, protect intellectual property and meet regulatory compliance requirements – driving interest in ShareFile StorageZones. StorageZones offers IT the flexibility to store data in secure Citrix-managed datacenters in multiple worldwide locations, or on-premise within their own datacenters.
At Citrix Synergy 2013, we announced new ShareFile StorageZones options with Microsoft Windows Azure. We are now pleased to announce the general availability of ShareFile StorageZones on Azure with the release of ShareFile StorageZones Controller software version 2.2. This release includes support for Windows Azure storage containers, therefore if you have a Windows Azure account, you can use an Azure storage container for your private data storage instead of a locally maintained share. Hosting ShareFile data natively in your Microsoft Azure account helps IT build the most cost-effective and customized solution for their organization. This customer-managed solution integrates ShareFile with Microsoft Azure’s Binary Large Object (Blob) storage, a cloud service for storing large amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS.
Product Overview
Azure storage is customer-managed storage hosted in the Windows Azure cloud. File uploads are initially deposited into a temporary storage area shared by all StorageZone controllers. Then, a background service copies those files to the Windows Azure storage container and deletes the local cached copy of the file(s).
Typically with CIFS based StorageZones, the Controller servers are installed on-premise in the customer’s datacenter. However, if a customer is hosting virtual machines in Azure, they could install the StorageZone Controller software on instances running in their Azure account and not necessarily on-premise.
Read the ShareFile StorageZones on Azure Storage Technical Brief and watch the video Installing and Configuring ShareFile StorageZones v2.2 with Microsoft Azure to learn more about this solution.
Check out our Citrix and…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix #ShareFile StorageZone Controller logs – #BYOD
This is great blog post by Dan about where to find that little extra info when you’re having issues with StorageZone controllers!
When troubleshooting issues with the Citrix ShareFile StorageZone Controller the first place to look will be on the Monitoring page of the StorageZone Controller configuration page. If there are items in red on that page I’d next recommend looking in the logs for more details information.
The logs for the StorageZone Controller are located by default at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\StorageCenter\SC\logs.
Within this directory multiple logfiles exist. The main ones you should check are:
- cfgsrv_%date%.txt – StorageZone configuration logs
- sc_%date%.txt – ShareFile StorageZone “ShareFile Data” logs
- CIFS_%date%.txt – ShareFile StorageZone Connectors for Network File Shares logs
- sharepoint_%date%.txt – ShareFile StorageZone Connectors for SharePoint logs
You can enable extended logging for…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix #ShareFile StorageZone controller 2.2 released – #BYOD
If you haven’t seen this then have a look at what 2.2 now has to offer!
- StorageZones for ShareFile Data — You can store ShareFile data in either Windows Azure cloud storage or a private single-tenant storage system that you maintain. You specify a storage option when you configure StorageZones for ShareFile Data.
What’s new
StorageZones Controller 2.2 provides the following enhancements:
Support for Windows Azure storage containers — If you have a Windows Azure account, you can use an Azure storage container for your private data storage instead of a locally-maintained share.
To get started create a new zone and choose the Azure option when you configure StorageZones for ShareFile Data.
Connectors to SharePoint root-level sites — You can now create a StorageZones Connector for a SharePoint root-level site or site collection, enabling users to navigate all of the subsites and document libraries in the site. To provide more limited access, you can continue to create connectors to individual SharePoint document libraries.
Connectors to user home drives based on Active Directory — You can now create a Connector for network file shares that reliably points to user home drives. To create a connector for user home drives, set the UNC path to the variable %homedrive%. StorageZones Controller will then create connectors based on the user home folder path property in Active Directory.
Installation on non-English operating systems — You can install the English version of StorageZones Controller on the following operating system versions: French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish.
Read more here!
//Richard
10TB of free #cloud #storage from China’s #Tencent
Wow, that really puts some pressure on the “other” guys!!! 10TB is a lot!
I’ve talked to people and some are concerned about that it’s a China owned company even though the storage will be located in the US and Southeast Asia though it’s the company that has the “power” to manage and control it, but let us set that aside for now! 10TB of free storage! 🙂
Chinese Internet giant Tencent is looking to dole out a jaw-dropping 10TB worth of free cloud storage to its international users soon, as it seeks to roll out an English version of its cloud storage product next year, PandoDaily reports.
Peter Zheng, the Shenzhen-based vice president of Tencent’s social network group, tells PandoDaily that the company will bring its cloud storage offering to the US in early 2014. It is also launching an English version of Story Camera, an Instagram-like watermark-based photo app already popular in China, in the next two to three weeks.
In August, Tencent started courting Chinese users with its very generous gift of space — as it sought to out-do its rivals Baidu and Qihoo, which started giving away 1TB worth of free storage.
As Tencent gets into the game with an English version of its cloud storage service though, it looks set to attract way more users around the world who want to get their hands on this colossal amount of space — which, to be honest, seems almost impossible to finish using.
The whopping 10TB puts the free space given by Dropbox, Box and Microsoft to shame. At their maximum amounts, Dropbox has offered free space amounts ranging from 25-50GB as part of promotional deals with Samsung and HTC, Box has offered 50GB of free storage with file-size limitations before, and Microsoft upped the storage space for its SkyDrive Pro offering from 7GB to 25GB.
However, just as with the Chinese rollout, Tencent will likely kick in the same caveat for its cloud storage offering — that is, you won’t get the whole 10TB worth of space at one go. Instead, Tencent will top up your storage space as you deplete it.
To put privacy concerns at ease, Zheng tells Pandodaily that the international data will probably be stored on servers outside of China — in the same way that Tencent’s messaging service WeChat uses servers in the US and Southeast Asia.
As Tencent is taking big strides…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Configuring #ShareFile and #SAML Walkthrough – via @andyjmorgan
Another great blog post by Andrew! Great job!
While working with a customer recently on a sharefile implementation, I set about creating a SAML / Active Directory single sign on deployment. Configuring ADFS and SAML were complete unknowns to me so I set about documenting the process end to end for future reference.
The end result of this activity will allow you to login to sharefile using a native account (think Guest) or an active directory account (think internal user).
What you will need in order to follow this guide:
- An enterprise Sharefile account.
- A local domain.
- An active directory service account. (standard user rights are fine)
- A windows 2012 server to host ADFS (windows 2008 r2 is fine, but you’ll need to install ADFS 2.0 manually).
- This windows server must be accessible via https (443) from the internet. (Netscaler SSL works fine).
- An external trusted certificate for the web server hosting saml (e.g. adfs.yourdomain.com). For this walk through, I’ll assume you have already done this. *
- A copy of the Sharefile User Management Tool.
- About 2-3 hours spare.
* for this, generate a server certificate and import it into the local machines personal certificates.
Steps:
- Installing Active Directory Federated Services.
- Configuring Federated Services.
- Configuring Sharefile for SAML.
- Syncing Active Directory users with Sharefile.
- Testing the saml login….
Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Citrix #XenMobile 8.5 MAM upgrade! Part 1 – #StoreFront, #AppController, #NetScaler
In this little blog series series you’ll follow a little upgrade process to XenMobile 8.5 for Mobile Application Management (previously known as CloudGateway).
Ok, I don’t exactly know where to begin. I must first say that Citrix is THE master when it comes to renaming products, updating/changing the architecture, changing consoles (claiming to reducing the number of them like every year but at the same time introduce new ones).
How hard can it be to make crystal clear documentation and upgrade processes that works and are easy? I feel already that my tone in this blog post is “a bit” negative… but I think that Citrix actually deserves it this time.
I must now take a step back and calm down and point out that Citrix is delivering some MAJOR changes and good news/features in the new XenMobile 8.5 release though! It’s great (when you’ve got it up and running) and I must say that I don’t see anyone that is near them in delivering all these capabilities in a nice end-to-end delivery!! 🙂
Have a look at everything that is new, deployment scenarios etc. here before you even start thinking to upgrade or change your current NetScaler, StoreFront and AppController environment!
Once you’ve started to read the different design scenarios you’ll see that App Controller can be placed in front of StoreFront, in the back of StoreFront or totally without StoreFront… all the options just make your head spin! Because Citrix doesn’t really make it clear on how all of this should work with a Receiver and Worx Home depending if the device is on the internal network, external through NetScaler or what the capabilities that you need are supported in the different scenarios in a simple way, just text that explains it. And I find the pictures and text a bit misleading:
As you see above the App Controller is added as a “Farm” just as in 2.6, but is that the truth now in version 2.8 of App Controller?
If you have a look at the text from this page it’s getting even more confusing: Read more…
The IT Melting Pot! 