Citrix [CTXS], a Florida-based mobile solutions and cloud service provider, is piloting its mobile offerings with the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Logistics Agency and the Departments State and Homeland Security, according to Vice President for the U.S. Public Sector Tom Simmons.
The pilots complement the release of the Department of Defense’s mobile strategy in June, which called for a department-wide exploration of how to further mobile integration.
Citrix offers a suite of products related to mobility, but Simmons said the company’s advantage is its ability to streamline any laptop, tablet or smartphone with the same interface.
“The IT manager in DoD is not bound by a particular device,” he said. “The device becomes less of a limiting factor.”
The company offers its products on a per user basis, rather than per device. This allows all of a user’s devices to be covered under the same license and to function in the same environment, Simmons said.
Citrix’s XenMobile, announced this year, is a Mobile Device Management product, but it allows users to have both personal and government data on their devices while keeping them separate.
Simmons said users are trending toward “bring your own device” (BYOD), so they only have one laptop or smartphone. He said Xen’s ability to securely permit proprietary government data as well as personal data, such as music and photos, on the same device mirrors how users employ technology in their daily lives.
“They’re trying to expand beyond just the email function that defined mobility in the BlackBerry era,” he said of DoD.
The Citrix Receiver–recently renamed the Citrix WorXhome–software provides authentication and access for all of its mobile products. The unified platform means that the specific operating system becomes irrelevant.
“The only thing that’s required is that you have the ability to pull that Citrix Receiver down,” Simmons said.
The company also provides secure file-transfer in the cloud with ShareFile.
To prevent software from becoming obsolete, Citrix will translate its clients’ legacy applications to work with newer offerings.
“What we’re providing is that hedge against future technologies,” Simmons said.