Techaisle Blog

Steve Daheb, Chief Marketing Officer, Citrix, says, “Citrix is a cloud solutions company that enables mobile workstyles”. This philosophy’s execution is anchored to its three product pillars:

1. XenDesktop
2. Netscaler, and
3. XenMobile

Citrix has committed itself to an ambitious definition of enterprise mobility, with a framework spanning nine components; customers can use Citrix technologies to create an integrated, single vendor solution covering all nine areas, or can opt to plug competing products into any of the nine areas – an approach that Citrix has labeled “any-ness.”

Mobile Delivery Infrastructure (MDI)

We believe that there is current demand in the market for a reasoned approach to defining enterprise mobility. The suppliers of the endpoint products aren’t in a position to define the architecture and services needed to connect their products to corporate networks, applications and data, and the suppliers of data center infrastructure lack visibility into the endpoint side of the equation. Citrix is unique in spanning both environments, and its approach to enabling customers is, in our opinion, well-aligned with the need for architectural clarity that we have observed in the market. Accordingly, using the Citrix framework as a starting point, we have created a definition of enterprise mobility that we have dubbed “Mobile Delivery Infrastructure,” or MDI. MDI is comprised of three distinct, critical solution pillars: endpoint tracking and security, collaboration and sharing, and app delivery and management.

Unsurprisingly, given our starting point, Citrix can be seen as a standard-setter for MDI. Its approach to MDI will likely attract many firms in search of a consistent approach: Citrix’s fundamental belief that work is not a place, simpler is better and any-ness wins will resonate with many customers looking for a starting point for a mobility framework.

The breadth of the Citrix portfolio will also help prospective customers to understand the requirement for the full breadth of MDI technologies. While many other cloud companies are developing either one solution or several for mobile workforce enablement, Citrix’s strategy seems akin to Microsoft’s during its formative years: it owned the platform (the operating system) for the PC, attracting an ecosystem of hardware, software and networking companies which built products and solutions extending the utility of the core product. To that extent, Citrix seems to have created a corporate mobility delivery infrastructure that can either be utilized stand alone or combined with other solutions.

SMB Market Potential

Citrix‘s main target has been the enterprise segment, which has served it well. It has yet to develop a coherent strategy for marketing and selling to the SMB segment, relying on partners to address the market. However, Techaisle research demonstrates that the SMB focused channel partners themselves want tremendous help from their vendors. For example US channel partner data clearly shows the help required on multiple fronts.

Nevertheless, the SMB market has huge potential with nearly 300 million mobile workers by 2016.The SMBs investing in mobile enablement will need MDI solutions to supporting these 300 million mobile workers – which will create demand for one or more solutions within Citrix’s MDI platform.

Techaisle outlook: We believe that mobility is transitioning from being defined by devices to being defined by management strategies – and that this will create demand for MDI. With products covering each aspect of MDI – and with an approach that supports both single-vendor and best-of-breed deployments – Citrix is extremely well positioned to benefit from this transition.

A common SMB usage scenario

An IT administrator of a small business gets a call from an employee saying that he lost his iPad with customer billing info, specs of recent architecture drawing; corporate emails and he did not even have a lock in the iPad. What can the IT Administrator do? This is where Codeproof comes into picture. With Codeproof, the IT Administrator could have remotely located the iPad, locked it and even remotely erased the iPad thereby preventing any data-theft.

A common barrier to Mobility Adoption within SMBs

The need for device and data security for mobile devices is an important deterrent in mobility adoption, especially as consumer and business apps converge onto the same devices. Nevertheless mobility is here to stay but going down the route of mobility is also fraught with unexpected surprises – most important being accidental loss of device with company data, employee walking off with device or malware creating havoc with the device.  Many surveys conducted by Techaisle reveal that SMBs worry about these issues a lot but fail to protect themselves adequately. For example, 69 percent of SMB IT Decision makers in the US are concerned about accidental loss of devices containing sensitive data. And nearly 1/3rd of these decision makers are also concerned about inability to manage device configurations so that they comply with company policies. To top it all, there is the issue of managing employee devices that businesses did not buy.

Techaisle survey of 9,500 SMBs across different geographies show that accidental loss of device followed by imminent danger of mobile viruses are the top concerns of SMBs while using mobile applications. This also clearly demonstrates the need for remote mobile device management, authentication, and remote erasure of data.

 

The above data clearly demonstrates the need for remote management, authentication, and remote erasure of data on mobile devices. Data no longer resides on tethered devices such as desktops but is spread across multiple devices that “move”. SMBs need to plan for it to make mobility an enjoyable and productive experience.

Codeproof is a simple to use, Cloud-based, SaaS, Freemium model MDM

In four easy steps Codeproof MDM is up and running on iOS and Android devices. A Seattle-based company, Codeproof offers an integrated BYOD security and mobile device management platform specially targeted at small and medium businesses. Some of its main mobile security features are App-white listing, Malware protection and Mobile policy management. It is built on Amazon EC2 elastic cloud for scalability, anytime, anywhere access.

An admin can enroll all mobile devices to Codeproof by installing and enrolling Codeproof App on the device. As the devices get enrolled via the mobile Copdeproof app, the devices automatically appear in Codeproof Cloud console tree. The admin can now remotely manage all devices from Cloud console. When an employee leaves the company, the admin just deletes the corresponding employee MDM profiles (WiFi profiles, Email Profiles, etc.) thus disabling the devices from accessing any type of corporate data.

Codeproof is free for 2 devices and is priced at only 29.99$ per device per year. It is worth a try.

We all know that Tablet usage within small businesses (1-99 employees) has been on the rise. As per several Techaisle surveys the penetration rates of Tablet adoption varies from 12 percent to over 30 percent in some countries within small businesses. Techaisle surveys also definitely show that Tablets are largely being used as add-ons to traditional PCs, however there is some incidence of notebooks in particular being replaced by tablets in mobile scenarios. While most repeat tablet purchases are intended to be add-ons to existing PCs, larger Small Businesses have expressed a desire to replace existing notebooks with these devices. This is indicative of a desire but the actual decision will likely be driven by a more logical analysis of capabilities of both devices over the near term. The use of Tablets within small businesses has spread from corner offices and executive suites to a broader adoption within rank and file workers to support line of business and productivity applications. Although the Senior Management and the Sales Executive Personnel are the prime users of Tablets, it is found that among the larger size businesses IT Departments are increasingly using Tablets as they work towards application customization and management of tablets.

Techaisle’s surveys in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, UK, and the US show there are two clear stages of application usage within small businesses.

• Discovery stage – where only basic applications are used. Initial adopters start with Emails, Internet Search, Social Media, and Productivity applications but quickly transition to Deployment stage.

• Deployment stage – in this stage small businesses guided by enhance productivity and motivated by Tablet’s mobility start deploying business related applications.

A comparison of applications being deployed by small businesses across different countries:

Looking at the above data it becomes quite obvious that sales, collaboration, and line of business applications come to the fore-front of most small businesses for Tablet deployments.

Small businesses are giving a clear signal to ISVs that developing for Tablets better be on their product road map. Over one-third of small business using Tablets are also planning to develop custom apps for Tablets, and over three-fourth say that it is very important for ISVs to develop enterprise level applications to support Tablets.

The scenarios change slightly for Smartphone application deployment where payment processing appears more often across most countries, but that is a topic of another discussion.

Detailed SMB Mobility Adoption & Trends reports are available for purchase for each country Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Australia, Germany, UK, and the US. If interested please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Techaisle’s SMB Mobility adoption research and corresponding segmentation shows that there are three distinct SMB segments of mobility solution users.

Aggressive Adopters: Mobility is Strategic to their business; these form 13 percent of SMBs

Steady Movers: Mobility is enabled in their business; by far the largest segment at 49 percent of SMBs

Fence Sitters: Mobility is a convenience for their business; these form 19 percent of SMBs

It is imperative for IT Vendors and channels to understand the segments' different attitudes towards mobility, current and planned usage of mobility and firmographics to create an actionable marketing strategey. For example, Techaisle’s SMB Mobility Segmentation shows that for 13 percent of SMBs that fall into the Aggressive Adopters segment mobility is strategic to their business growth and survival. A deep understanding of the three segments will help IT vendors and channel partners identify their target markets and how to sell into them.

Sales Strategies for SMB Mobility Segments



Even in terms of spending, aggressive adopters are spending a higher percentage of their IT budget on mobility solutions. Interestingly, Fence Sitters are spending comparatively higher percentage on mobility consulting assessments looking for advice on the most appropriate solutions before adopting mobility enterprise-wide.

BYOD Policy and Use of Tablets & Smartphones

Not only Aggressive Adopters were the first to use tablets and smartphones but they also have the highest density (mobile devices per employees) and highest average number of tablets and smartphones being used at all employee size levels among all three segments.



There are twice as many SMBs in the Aggressive Adopters segment as Fence Sitters that use Tablets and Smartphones.

Aggressive Adopters have also moved quickly to implement a BYOD policy whereas a large percentage of Steady Movers do not have a BYOD policy but they also do not stop their employees from using their own devices.

 

Aggressive Adopters also have a very healthy attitude towards employees using consumer applications at work as they feel it is a good way to learn about technology that their employees find useful and can be officially integrated into their business.

Adoption of mobility solutions has also led to a positive effect on work-life balance of their employees. Aggressive Adopters have also seen improved productivity, higher employee satisfaction and improved quality of work.

With improved productivity and quality of work there will be a continued proliferation of mobile devices and corresponding solutions that will drive new forms of collaboration of content and communication. As devices become increasingly small, smart, connected and powerful, the server and network become less visible progressively moving offsite both physically and from a management perspective, simultaneously serving more computing power, storage and bandwidth; mobility will revolve around collaboration delivered through an enhanced browser. Therefore, todays Aggressive Adopters will look for integration of communication channels, content and workflow as the foundation on which to build their strategic mobile solutions.

The responsibility lies with the IT Vendors and their channel partners to effectively mine the Aggressive Adopters’ segment at the same time using realized proof points to move each of the other two segments (Steady Movers and Fence Sitters) to the Aggressive Adopter segment.

In terms of market opportunity, Aggressive Adopters show the highest growth rate for mobility spending requiring sophisticated solutions whereas Steady Movers have the biggest size due to sheer volume of SMBs falling into the category.