We had a dozen Wepz and 10 clients in Anaheim last week for the annual Citrix Synergy conference. The guiding theme for all their solution development and strategy is now “Going Mobile”. The integration and presentation of all their products as a unified set of solutions to mobilize the enterprise is a fantastic turn in their evolution. And a natural one for Citrix. Given the product releases they announced and the demos they put on, they’ve obviously put a ton of investment into their mobile access technology, the SaaS GoTo product family, and especially my favourite: ShareFile. It’s one thing to see the carefully crafted and rehearsed product demos on a stage … Those are always impressive, and sometimes 6-12 months away from being Weapons Grade enough for us to roll out to clients. However, to actually see the stuff in action with IT professionals around the conference was pretty cool.
2 episodes struck a chord with me and provide a cool glimpse into what we can achieve right now with some of these technologies. First, coming down a conference escalator on Wednesday morning with Jeremy I saw an IT guy – like you or me- talking to, laughing at, and eventually kissing his iPad. I knew right away what he was up to … Having a Skype call with his kid(s). By the time we got to the bottom, this guy was typing feverishly on the same iPad screen; as it turns out – he was now inside a virtual Windows 7 desktop using Citrix Receiver. I had to say something; letting him know how cool it was to see someone living and breathing a happy work/life balance. He agreed. Think about it … While he was at a conference on the west coast, he was still able to take a few minutes and hang with his kids in the morning before they head to school on the east coast. Then catch up on a few work emails, review a document really quick, close the iPad and head to another conference session.
The second episode came on the trip home from Anaheim. We were in the car on the way to the airport; a 30 minute ride. Brett, Nuno, Jay, and a few others back at the office had a big conference call scheduled to review a proposal for a new client. Rather than re-schedule or participate haphazardly simply over the phone, Brett used the tools available. He hopped onto the free hotel Wi-Fi before we left and using ShareFile, he put the PowerPoint slides we were going to review onto his iPad locally (inside the ShareFile client). When the call started, he and Nuno used GoTo Meeting as a call bridge to connect to 6 other people and they were able to follow along the presentation content locally so Brett didn’t chew through a bunch of roaming 4G data … And they remained productive in the conversation.
Truly mobile. Truly productive. This stuff works. Are you ready to mobilize your enterprise?
