As summer transitions to fall, there’s usually only one thing on my mind: football. Between scouting the new players on my beloved San Francisco 49ers and crunching numbers to prepare for my fantasy football Football drafts, I simply can’t get enough.

In addition to being passionate about my 49ers, there are two other teams that REALLY came into play in August: our Citrix Workspace product and engineering teams. They continue to move the chains, week after week, delivering exciting new features that will elevate both the employee experience and the IT experience for our customers.

I’ve been writing this blog just about every month for the past year, and I can say with confidence that this past month has been one of the best months ever for new Citrix Workspace innovation on record.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service

Let’s kick things off with a HUGE new product release from our Virtual Apps and Desktops team: The Citrix Managed Desktops service is now available. 

Citrix Managed Desktops is a new desktop-as-a-service solution that, simply put, is the easiest and fastest way to deliver virtual Windows apps and desktops from the cloud to any device. Leveraging Microsoft Azure as its foundation, Citrix Managed Desktops builds on top of that with the addition of all-time tested management tools, industry-leading, high-performance HDX protocol support and network optimization that has made Citrix a global leader in virtualization.

Citrix Managed Desktops is now available worldwide. For more information on the new Citrix Managed Desktops service please check out the release blog from Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer PJ Hough.

Citrix Access Control and Gateway service

General Availability

August gave us a lot cheer about from Citrix Access Control and Citrix Gateway service. For starters, we announced general availability and VPN-less access to on-premises web apps. With these new capabilities, you can replace traditional VPN solutions with the more simplified approach that comes with Citrix Access Control.

Tech Preview

Citrix Workspace, in conjunction with an on-premises Citrix Gateway supports contextual access and multi-factor authentication. If you require integration of Citrix Workspace with Radius, or any other third-party authentication provider, you’ve now got another play in your playbook!

Similarly, Citrix Workspace now supports Okta (tech preview) for identity integration, as well as providing Okta MFA for Citrix Workspace. Integration with Okta and an identity provider enables Citrix Workspace to function as an identity provider or as an identity broker. This gives our customers plenty of choice and flexibility when deploying identity services alongside Workspace services.

Previously, Citrix Access Control capabilities worked only with the Citrix Workspace cloud platform infrastructure, which created some challenges for our customers. Many Citrix customers have on-prem Citrix infrastructure, but they aren’t quite ready to migrate away. They still want to consume some of our new Workspace services that are delivered from the cloud. Now we’ve got an answer for that. Score!

Citrix Access Control capabilities now can be used in conjunction with an existing on-prem StoreFront. This is a pretty big deal! Now our existing customers can help users organize work by using the same StoreFront UI without moving to the Workspace service. Citrix Access Control capabilities bring an extra layer of security beyond SSO that can help prevent data leaks for SaaS and web apps by applying restrictions to our embedded Chromium browser.

Also available this month as a tech preview is support for third-party mobile SSO. Of course Citrix can deliver virtual apps (and now SaaS and web apps), but delivering a desktop experience to a smart phone often times is a lousy gameday experience. For apps like Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, and others, the natively-mobile version of the app will be the easiest to navigate. With Citrix Workspace support for third-party mobile apps, SSO in the Workspace app will provide access to third-party managed apps without the need to enter any additional user names, passwords, or tokens.

The Citrix Gateway service now provides micro-VPN capabilities for our customers using micro-VPN for Secure Mail and Secure Web. This means customers no longer have to manage a Citrix ADC VPX for on-prem. The Citrix Gateway service with micro-VPN service, combined with the Citrix Gateway connector, provides the same functionality and security as on-prem without an infrastructure footprint.

And new points of presence for the Citrix Access Control service have given it a global performance boost, as well.

Citrix Analytics service

We’re pleased to announce that the Citrix Analytics service is now available in the European Union. This allows our European customers, previously limited by data sovereignty regulations, to take advantage of the Citrix Analytics service now.

Similar to the Citrix Access Control service, Citrix Analytics service now supports customers that have an on-prem Citrix infrastructure. Many of our customers still are on a journey to the full Citrix Workspace, so this hybrid option is a great example of the choice and flexibility we’re able to offer customers in the midst of a digital transformation journey. With a combination of on-prem Citrix solutions and the cloud-based Citrix Workspace service, customers can still get a comprehensive, user-centric view of worker behavior and have the ability to automate actionable responses to security threats.

New custom risk indicators enable IT to define its own parameters for security threats. Does “excessive downloads” mean 1 GB of data or 100 GB of data? IT can dial in just the right level. Additional new capabilities for Citrix Analytics service include privileged user display status, automated link expirations, and self-service search enhancements, all of which leverage wild cards to make it easier for IT to search user and device records. Also new data error status on site cards allows IT to quickly identify when a site is down and no data is being received by the Citrix Analytics service. Learn more here.

Citrix Endpoint Management service

In August, we introduced Hybrid mode for the Citrix Workspace app. Hybrid mode allows our customers to avoid an “all-in” commitment when migrating from the older Workspace app experience (think Receiver) to the new experience. Hybrid mode enables the creation of separate delivery groups. This allows IT to begin new Workspace app enrollments as existing users who are still on the older experience are being migrated to the new UI over time. Hybrid mode also allows IT to support both Workspace mode and Kiosk mode for different groups of users in a single Citrix Endpoint Management environment.

Also new in August was the ability to track the locations of Android devices. (iOS is already supported.) This feature works great for corporate issued/owned devices when the devices need to remain on-site. A geofencing policy allows IT to easily set-up a perimeter that, if crossed, will trigger the Citrix Endpoint Management service to take action on the device.

The month of August always means it’s time for the annual Android release, too. Android Q supports a fully-managed device with a work profile for corporate issued/personally operated devices. Citrix Endpoint Management (CEM) support for Android Q also includes the ability to publish apps directly from the CEM console instead of relying on the Google Play store or requiring a Developer Account. Learn more here.

Citrix Content Collaboration service

For Citrix Content Collaboration there are two big ticket items to highlight for August. The first is an updated Citrix Files desktop experience for Windows and macOS. The new Citrix Files delivers a unified desktop experience, providing a single interface for all your files and content repositories. By combining all the functionality and benefits of our Drive Mapper, Sync, and Desktop App tools, users can access all their files without requiring a full local sync. Users also can initiate critical native workflows like electronic signature and feedback/approvals right from their native Windows Explorer and macOS Finder.

We’re also really excited about some of the new Cloud Connector enhancements to OneDrive for Business and other popular connectors.

We’ve extended Citrix Files features to OneDrive for Business. Some of the new features supported include:

  • Share link option that reflects the most recent version of the file
  • Increased file upload size to 15GB
  • The ability for administrators to consent on behalf of their users when first authenticating to the OneDrive for Business Connector, providing an SSO experience to Office 365

All our other connectors also got some feature enhancements, including the ability to mark content in folders as favorites and inclusion in the “Recent Files” section of the Citrix Workspace app UI.

As you can see, the Citrix Workspace team really lit up the scoreboard in August. I’ll be back next month for another update on what’s new. Until then, make sure to enjoy this great fall weather while rooting for your favorite teams!

Wait, hang on. It looks like this blog is about to go into overtime!

The Citrix Endpoint Management service highlight reel for August includes analyst firm Gartner naming Citrix as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools. We are proud and excited to have received this recognition. Click here to access the report.