Citrix has announced a new release of Citrix XenClient, further executing on the company’s enterprise mobility strategy. By leveraging the powerful personalisation and profile management technology in Citrix XenDesktop, XenClient 5 allows mobile workers to seamlessly work across laptops, tablets and smartphones using their virtual desktop – hosted or local – along with their files and documents.
XenDesktop with XenClient and Citrix ShareFile give mobile workers the personalised virtual desktop experience and data synchronisation they want, where they want it, all with the centralised control IT needs.
The unique integration of XenClient 5, included as part of XenDesktop represents an industry first, providing personalisation and profile management across local and hosted virtual desktops. Industry analysts expect this to drive broader adoption of desktop virtualisation, a key enabler of the mobile enterprise.
According to IDC, by 2015 the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1,3-billion, representing approximately 37,2% of the total workforce. Mobile workers use multiple devices – laptops, smartphones and tablets – in the office and on the road.
They expect their desktop and their data to be available wherever they need to work. VDI has helped drive mobile workstyles, but when users need the full power of their laptop, or need to work offline, a local virtual desktop is more appropriate.
This has created a significant opportunity for local virtual desktops to enhance the hosted virtual desktop (VDI) experience. Up until now, options for delivering a consistent personalised local and hosted virtual desktop experience have required complex custom deployments, or compromises in user experience.
XenClient, now included as part of XenDesktop, offers the first solution to unify the mobile worker experience across hosted and local virtual desktops.
XenClient 5 integrates Personal vDisk technology already in XenDesktop to enable personalisation, and integrates with ShareFile to sync data across local and hosted virtual desktop environments.
Users will have a seamless and personalised user experience, and IT gains new levels of security, reliability and control with simplified desktop management. The integration of Personal vDisk technology is built into the two core components of XenClient:
* XenClient Engine – XenClient is a true Type-1 client hypervisor that runs on bare metal and provides high performance and security, letting users run a centrally managed virtual desktop and lets power users run multiple local virtual desktops simultaneously, side-by-side and in complete isolation. Users of XenClient-powered devices can access their various virtual desktops anywhere, anytime – even while disconnected from the network.
* XenClient Synchronizer – Synchronizer for XenClient enables IT to centrally manage the virtual desktops running locally on PCs as well as manage the devices themselves. Using Synchronizer, IT can centrally back up user data through a secure connection whenever the user connects to the Internet, define security policies, disable lost or stolen PCs, and restore a user’s virtual desktop on any XenClient-based device.
“It’s a multi-device world and managing this heterogeneous environment is driving the client virtualisation market to grow to $4.1 billion in 2017. Between corporate-owned and personally-owned, many users today have three to four devices,” says Brett Waldman, research manager, IDC.
“With the unified profile management updates to XenClient 5, Citrix streamlines the integration with XenDesktop and simplifies the administrator’s processes while improving the user experience as he or she moves between devices.”
“With this new level of integration with XenDesktop and seamless personalisation and synchronisation across devices, XenClient further enables enterprises to go mobile. Users have the ability to work from any device, even offline with their laptops, and IT achieves greater security and manageability,” says Mitch Parker, VP and GM, Client Virtualisation at Citrix.