Citrix touts digital workspace app in services play

Citrix has unveiled a cloud-based digital workspace app designed to deliver secure, single sign-on access to multiple applications, including third-party cloud software to facilitate workplace flexibility.

The Citrix Workspace app provides a single location for workers to access their software-as-a-service (SaaS), Windows and Linux applications, along with all their files and shared resources. It is also integrated with ServiceNow, so users can request a service ticket from within the Workspace app.

“Work is no longer a place. Work happens everywhere, but we are making it too hard and we fracture the user experience across too many places,” said Citrix CEO David Henshall at Citrix Synergy in Anaheim, California.

While Citrix has not released pricing for the Workspace app, Henshall said deploying and managing traditional point offerings to allow flexible access to corporate information systems could cost organisations $800 to $1,000 per user each year.

Citrix will be looking to significantly reduce that burden with the pricing of the new Workspace app, which Henshall claimed is the first unified digital workspace.

Integration with cloud services – such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Oracle, ServiceNow, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Atlassian and DocuSign – is available out of the box. Users also have the flexibility to move an e-mail thread in the workspace automatically to Slack for group communications.

Separately, Citrix has also announced an automated security analytics offering that guards against phishing by monitoring connected devices and user activity before grouping users into different risk profiles.

Using machine learning to identify risky or suspicious activity, and inputs from security monitoring services, the software can automate some security actions, such as preventing employees from clicking on suspicious email links.