The IT Nerd

I was fortunate enough to be invited to Citrix Canada’s opening of their new office in Markham Ontario yesterday. I have to admit that a lot of these sort of events are typically not that interesting. Sure you get some drinks and some moderately cool swag. But that’s really about it. This one was very different. Let me explain why:

Michael Murphy, VP & country manager of Citrix Canada kicked off the festivities by speaking about how he arrived at setting up shop in Markham Ontario. 

Markham Ontario Mayor Frank Scarpitti joined in by expressing the fact that more high tech companies are in Markham than most other places in Ontario. Besides welcoming Citrx to the neighborhood, he’s also a happy customer of the company. 

There were demos to be had at the event. Two things that jumped out of me is the new capabilities of ShareFile which now allows users to collaborate with each other on any platform, the ability to do version control, and being able to better control who sees your files when they leave your computer. The other thing that jumped out at me was a demo of SD-WAN which I wrote about here. I understood what SD-WAN did in terms of how it could take multiple routes to the Internet and route traffic to the best route or routes. But seeing how well it worked to do not only that, but to ensure that your Internet access speed is optimized first hand was extremely enlightening. I encourage you to see a SD-WAN demo if one is offered to you. You’ll be impressed.

For fun, Citrix set up a VR demo that was extremely engaging. I tried it out and I was impressed by the quality of this VR demo. Who says VR is dead?

One thing that I should point out that Citrix Canada’s office is only 5000 square feet. That’s not a whole lot of real estate. But they don’t need it as most of their staff works remotely leveraging the same technology that they sell to their customers to do so. But there are times that people need to meet and work together. Thus they have desks like these with phones. You’ll note that behind the phone is a place where you can plug into AC and Ethernet. There’s also small and large meeting rooms as well.

I really enjoyed my visit to Citrix’s new offices. Yes, I got some drinks and some cool swag. But I also got to see their cutting edge tech in action, and I got to see the fact that they actually use their own technology to conduct business. It impressed me, and I am sure it will impress others as well.

Citrix today announced that it has been named as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Virtual Client Computing Software 2016 Vendor Assessment. The IDC MarketScape highlighted Citrix investment in its core product lines (specifically XenApp and XenDesktop), along with a re-energized partnership with Microsoft, and its commitment to the public cloud as key factors its placement of Citrix as a market leader in the report.

                According to competitors and references cited in the report, “Citrix continues to be the benchmark that everyone compares other offerings with.” The report also noted “the leadership of new CEO Kirill Tatarinov and a new cloud-first mentality,” that has “reinvigorated and refocused” Citrix on “delivering customer value.”

This is something that will get the attention of CIOs and others who make decisions on what to buy for their IT infrastructure, and likely drive companies toward the products that Citrix makes.

By: Michael Murphy, VP & Country Manager, Citrix Canada

As the digital transformation continues to impact all aspects of our lives, there is none more significant than the workplace transformation taking place here in Canada. Employees are craving the flexibility and work-life balance that remote work allows. Time and again, research has shown that mobility increases employee retention, encourages productivity and drives business growth – a win-win for all parties if enterprise mobility initiatives are implemented correctly. But, while employees will reap the rewards of mobility, it’s up to the IT department to make sure it happens – a task that’s often easier said than done.

Citrix Canada published Enabling the Remote Workforce in Canada this year, which surveyed IT decision makers across Canada and looked at mobility trends. The findings uncovered an interesting disparity between IT decision maker perceptions and the actual benefits of mobility itself. You may recall the colourful infographic that showed these interesting statistics in a previous post, but let’s dive deeper into some of the roadblocks that exist and how mobility can impact a company’s bottom line.

Roadblocks to embracing mobility

Though it seems like a simple concept it’s important to understand what mobility is defined as, first and foremost. The survey found the majority of IT decision makers (83%) considered enterprise mobility as employees having the basic ability to send and receive emails. While this may meet the needs and wants of some companies, true mobility offers much more; minimizing restrictions so that employees can do their jobs successfully beyond the four walls of a traditional office. This means providing employees with secure access to essential applications and data from anywhere at any time providing a seamless user experience, and allowing for collaboration.

There is also a disconnect in understanding what it takes for mobility to be successfully adopted. In order for remote work policies to actually work, companies need to have a strong mobile strategy and the proper infrastructure in place, allowing employees to securely access the files they need, from anywhere, at any time. While 84% of IT decision makers report having employees that work remotely, two in five of those decisions makers admit that their company does not have a comprehensive mobility strategy in place. Remote work cannot function properly unless a robust strategy is in place, outlining rules and regulations, addressing impending culture change, and clearly identifying expectations on deadlines and work hours.

Nearly one-third of IT decision makers (32%) believe that remote work is a passing trend – a dangerous and short-sighted school of thought. In order for a mobile strategy to work, the IT team responsible for enabling the technology needs to believe in it and make it a driving priority. By dismissing mobility, companies can put themselves at risk of losing out on top talent, particularly since employees are ready and willing to fight for control over when and where they work (nearly 20% said they would take a new job if they were able to work remotely twice a week).

Another major barrier hindering the successful adoption of a mobile workplace is the perceived lack of security of company data and shared files. This concern is warranted if companies lack the proper technologies and policies required, however, a comprehensive strategy in combination with the right technological infrastructure can create a secure mobile workspace.

While all of these barriers can be challenging to surpass, the benefits far outweigh the barriers.

Impacting the Bottom Line

While there’s no doubt employees crave flexibility – an overwhelming majority (96%) want jobs that provide a healthy work-life balance – there are benefits that directly impact the overall business. The survey found that 62% of IT decisions makers say the biggest benefit their organization experienced is increased productivity. By providing employees with the opportunity to work remotely, they can work in a way that best suits their preferences and lifestyle which, in turn, contributes to improved employee retention.

Furthermore, in today’s economy more Canadians are looking to find balance and streamline their expenses. By providing the flexibility for employees to work remotely, Canadians can save time and money on traveling to the office, allowing them to spend more quality time with family.

In the survey, Canadian IT decision makers also cited that other benefits of mobility include:

• improved business continuity (46%)
• increased employee motivation (35%),
• improved ability to attract top talent (32%)

Interestingly, companies with revenue greater than $10M have more employees working remotely – 91% compared to 80%. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. According to an article in Harvard Business Review by Nathaniel Koloc, co-founder and CEO of ReWork, “Companies that officially allow employees to work remotely at least three times per month were more likely to report revenue growth of 10% or more within the last year, compared to firms without such policies.”Canadian businesses are inclined to agree; an overwhelming majority of 95% agree that mobility is integral to the competitiveness of their business.

Despite barriers, remote work is here to stay and is expected to continue to grow. Now more than ever, it is important that companies embrace mobility and continue to evolve with the workplace transformation.

First it was TeamViewer, now it’s GoToMyPC that’s been pwned by hackers as word has hit the streets that the popular remote access tool has been compromised. But unlike the TeamViewer bunch, Citrix who owns GoToMyPC admitted to it straightaway:

Unfortunately, the GoToMYPC service has been targeted by a very sophisticated password attack. To protect you, the security team recommended that we reset all customer passwords immediately.

Effective immediately, you will be required to reset your GoToMYPC password before you can login again.

To reset your password please use your regular GoToMYPC login link.

The document walks you through how to choose a new password and how to use two factor authentication. Something that I would recommend that you do. I’ll give Citrix points for just coming clean and putting its users first rather than denying that they’ve been hacked. Why? Because bad things are going to happen. That’s just life. But the manner that you deal with those things is what illustrates what kind of company that you are. The “good” companies admit when they’re wrong and deal with issues head on so that their users get the “warm fuzzies.” Citrix, at least in this case seems to that sort of company.

Source: Citrix

Today at Citrix’s annual conference, Citrix Synergy, Citrix showcased new products and services that offer the promise to accelerate digital transformation efforts by delivering a unified Workspace-as-a-Service (WaaS) that empowers workers with secure, on-demand access to the apps and data they need to work effectively and efficiently from anywhere. These on-demand workspaces from Citrix also give IT the ability to securely deliver and manage it all from a single, unified control plane.

Citrix has unveiled the following updates:

• ShareFile now allows information rights management for ShareFile. This feature lets data security “follow the file” as it leaves the ShareFile system – even if it is sent through unprotected devices, USB drives, or any other file sharing systems.   The rights management protection ensures that files require ShareFile authentication to access – even after the file has been downloaded
• XenApp and XenDesktop 7.9 have expanded authentication, enhanced graphics support and advanced printing capabilities, while simultaneously driving down virtual app and desktop delivery costs. In addition, XenApp and XenDesktop 7.9 provide powerful administrative monitoring and tools to simplify ongoing maintenance and configuration
• XenMobile 10.3.5builds on Citrix’s MAM-first option by enabling IT to distribute apps securely without requiring personal devices to be enrolled with a company’s mobile device management (MDM) solution. Another new feature includes Secure Forms, which allows line-of-business managers and IT to easily transform traditional paper forms into secure mobile mini-apps without writing a single line of code
• The Citrix NetScaler familyhas consolidated three new network offerings into the family: NetScaler Management and Analytics System (NMAS), NetScaler CPX and NetScaler SD-WAN Enterprise Edition

If you want to find out more about these announcements, check out the Synergy Newsroom for these and other announcements from Citrix Synergy.

First off, you’re likely wondering what an SD-WAN is. Software-defined Wide Area Network, or SD-WAN for short is an approach to designing and deploying an enterprise wide area network that uses software-defined networking to determine the most effective way to route traffic to remote locations. In short, this type of WAN has the “smarts” to give different types of traffic priority in almost a real time fashion. For example, voice and video chat can be made a priority over e-mail traffic if the former requires it. It also can leverage multiple types of links to the Internet to make it seem to the users that the business has a very fast link to the Internet.

Citrix is on the forefront of this technology via their CloudBridge Enterprise Edition product. It’s a single platform with fully integrated WAN virtualization, WAN security, WAN Optimization and end-to-end visibility. Even when there are problems with the network, CloudBridge is always on. CloudBridge Virtual WAN constantly assesses the performance of paths within the virtualized WAN to instantaneously and automatically adapt to changing network conditions. This ensures constant connectivity of mission-critical applications without human intervention or complex routing table reconfigurations. That means that you don’t need to have someone like me to set this up and manage this. In fact, Citrix says you can set one of these up in as little as 15 minutes. After it is set up, your users won’t complain about high bandwidth applications being slow as CloudBridge will do all the heavy lifting for you.

If you use VoIP, Video, or any high bandwidth application, you should check out the Citrix CloudBridge product lineup. There’s a variety of options there for every use case and size of business. Plus this link has all the technical information that you need to make the right choice for your company.

Citrix has announced the launch of Citrix Secure Browser – Citrix’s answer for quickly securing and managing web and SaaS applications.

Now, in minutes, an administrator can set up any web application to be securely delivered to any device, even internally hosted web apps, without intrusively installing anything on an employee’s device. Citrix Secure Browser is also built to help reduce shadow IT and increase security by abstracting the endpoints.

Citrix Secure Browser is available in three ways:

• Citrix Workspace Cloud Secure Browser is a fully hosted service from Citrix starting at $20-per-user-per-month for securely delivering an unlimited number of web apps.
• Citrix XenApp Secure Browser is available as a perpetual license beginning at $150 per user or device.
• Secure Browser Deployment Kit is free for XenApp and XenDesktop (excluding XenDesktop VDI edition) customers with active Subscription Advantage or software maintenance. This option leverages Citrix Lifecycle Management XenApp Secure Browser blueprint to streamline new deployments of XenApp dedicated for publishing web apps.

Additional information on Secure Browser is available on Citrix.com.

Citrix announced today the availability of its new NetScaler T1000 series. The new series integrates ByteMobile optimization technology with NetScaler’s platform architecture in order to enhance the mobile subscriber experience.

To ensure future success, service providers need a platform that can easily scale out to meet the continued explosive rapid growth of mobile traffic – specifically the rise of encrypted mobile video and content. According to the 2016 Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast, mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 62 percent between 2015 and 2020 with three-fourths (75 percent) of the world’s mobile data traffic consisting of video traffic by 2020.

Service providers need a solution that directly addresses the evolution of this traffic. Mobile video presently places the most stress on the mobile network yet its delivery serves as a key differentiator within the highly competitive mobile service provider marketplace. The optimization of this traffic becomes even more essential to meet the demands to improve network efficiency and enhance user experience – providing higher quality videos with less stalling to ultimately enhance subscriber quality of experience (QoE). Service providers are also seeking a platform that can dynamically and efficiently steer traffic through the most efficient service paths, directly determined by the subscribers’ needs. This helps reduce latency, improve speed and preserve functionality. Perhaps most importantly however, this can greatly reduce the costs to the service provider in delivering new services. The NetScaler T1000 platform combines subscriber-aware steering, load balancing, CGNAT and unique traffic identification and optimization technology – all in one single platform.

NetScaler is the only platform that can: scale at a dramatically lower cost per unit of capacity; provide the fluidity to evolve different elements of a network at different rates; and be leveraged seamlessly across physical, hybrid and fully virtualized and containerized implementations to assist the migration to NFV.

As the leader in the application virtualization and delivery markets, Citrix introduces this new enhanced platform which includes: a flexible architecture to manage different types of traffic; increased capacity which enables operational agility and flexibility; enhanced IT efficiencies through higher infrastructure utilization and consolidation ratios; and lower TCO of datacenter and network operations.

Additional benefits of the NetScaler T1000 for service providers include providing the ability to:

• Consolidate multiple functions on a single platform – Allows operators to simplify S/Gi-LAN deployment and reduce complexity and inefficiency. The most impactful consolidated scenario is that of carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT), data-plane load balancing, optimization and traffic steering.
• Scale mobile S/Gi-LAN services – Enables operators to scale out any network use case, including optimization and load balancing, CGNAT, optimization and traffic-steering in the data plane; and LTE DNS, SMPP, SIP, and Diameter load-balancing in the control plane.
• Platform and scalability options to address different network sizes – NetScaler T1000 comes in models supporting from 20 Gbps to 100 Gbps and 100 Gbps to 160 Gbps with paygrow options that allow license upgrades to higher throughputs. Furthermore, clustering of appliances can scale capacity up to 3.3 Tbps.
• Improved CAPEX and OPEX – NetScaler T1000 significantly lowers the cost per Gigabit capacity, providing up to 1/3 the cost of competitive ASIC-based platforms. Mobile operators can augment their networks with NetScaler and lower their overall total cost of ownership.
• Transition to automated and virtualized networks – NetScaler is certified with popular OpenStack distributions, such as Red Hat and Mirantis, and can be deployed as a physical network function (PNF). Furthermore, the NetScaler virtual ADCs, the VPX, can co-exist with NetScaler PNFs in a hybrid network exposing the same APIs to NFV orchestration platforms allowing all NetScaler platforms to be managed using the same management framework.

Citrix NetScaler T1000 will be generally available in Q1 2016. For more info, check out these blog entries:

• Blog: Citrix Delivering Next-Generation ADC for IoT
• Blog: NetScaler VPX Hits a New 100Gbps High!

Last week, Citrix announced that Kirill Tatarinov has been appointed President and CEO. Here’s what he brings to the table:

With 30 years of industry experience, Mr. Tatarinov has a long and successful track record overseeing product strategy and commercial operations in software and services. His background includes leadership positions at Microsoft for 13 years, including most recently serving as Executive Vice President of the Microsoft Business Solutions Division where he doubled revenue, increased profitability, led the division’s transformation to the cloud, and managed the global partner ecosystem. During his tenure at Microsoft, he also served as Corporate Vice President of the Management & Solutions Division where he accelerated product strategy execution, resulting in strong revenue growth. Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Tatarinov was a member of the senior leadership team at BMC, where he served as the Chief Technology Officer, as well as holding product and business development leadership positions.

He has quite the challenge in front of him. Citrix has recently axed 1,000 jobs and announced it will spin out its GoTo SaaS business. As in GoToMeeting and GoToAssist. Still you don’t last 13 years as Microsoft without having skills. We’ll see how he performs in his new post starting today.