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MAY 2015 VOLUME 1, NO. 3

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

We Are Living in an App Store World

FUN FACTS

How We Use Apps

THE UX FACTOR

To Mobilize or Not?

UNDER THE HOOD

Mobile Infrastructure

DEEP DIVE

VMI: Like VDI, but for Mobile Apps

DEVICE SPOTLIGHT

Apple Watch

EXCLUSIVE Q&A

Citrix CEO Mark Templeton

TRENDING

Codeless App Dev

CONFERENCE CALENDAR

The Summer of Mobility is Upon Us

Modern MobilityEnabling a mobile workforceMM

COVER STORY

There’s an App Store for ThatIt’s time to go

shopping. Enterprise app stores help IT

deliver secure apps to mobile users.

MODERN MOBILITY MAY 2015 2

HOME


THERE’S AN APP STORE FOR THAT

HOW WE USE MOBILE APPS

TO MOBILIZE OR NOT TO MOBILIZE?

WHY YOU NEED MOBILE INFRASTRUCTURE

VMI: LIKE VDI, BUT FOR MOBILE APPS

APPLE WATCH

CITRIX AIMS TO SOFTWARE- DEFINE EVERYTHING

CODELESS APP DEVELOPMENT

THE SUMMER OF MOBILITY IS UPON US

I’VE NEVER FOUND a mobile calendar app I’m 100% happy with.

Part of the problem is I keep my work and personal calendars separate. Work runs on my Windows PC through Microsoft Outlook and Exchange; personal runs on the Web through Google Calendar. Complicating matters fur-ther, my mobile devices are made by Apple. And the three vendors’ products and platforms don’t always play nice.

Needless to say, searching for the Holy Grail of calendar apps is frustrating. But the actual process of finding and downloading apps is simple, because we live in an app store econ-omy. I typed “calendar” into the Apple App Store search bar, and it spit out 7,103 results. In a matter of seconds, any one of those apps can be on my device. If I try one out and don’t like

it, it can be off my device just as quickly.Enterprise software deployment does not

work this way. There is usually just one appli-cation for a specific task, and if users don’t like it, tough. At the very least, they’ll have to wait months or years while the IT department evaluates, pilots, purchases and deploys some-thing new. Case in point: Back in November I attended a meeting to learn more about my company’s potential purchase of new collab-oration software. In March—four months lat-er—I received a follow-up email indicating the purchase is a go. It will probably be a few more months before the product is up and running.

The dichotomy between consumer and enterprise app deployment is stark, and it can cause significant problems in the business world. In this month’s cover story, managing editor Alyssa Wood explores this issue and the potential solutions emerging in the market. If you’re struggling to meet users’ expecta-tions, her article is just a click away—as easy as downloading an app. l

We Are Living in an App Store World

From The Editor’s Desk | COLIN STEELE


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CREDIT: ISTOCK

MOBILITY NOW

There’s an App Store for ThatWith enterprise app stores, IT securely stocks shelves for mobile workers.

ALYSSA WOOD


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ATE LAST YEAR, a small health-care solutions provider set about moving its internal and

external processes to a hybrid cloud infrastruc-ture. As part of that shift, the company also provided its employees with a simpler method for accessing important business applications on their mobile devices—a way for users to lit-erally go shopping for their apps.

Through Citrix’s Storefront portal, the pro-vider offers employees several apps that they use to glean feedback from their customers. The enterprise app store also brings new ben-efits to IT, allowing administrators to monitor mobile app usage, deploy updates and manage user access.

“I can do all of that remotely from my home if I wanted to, which is pretty kick-butt,” said Michael Thompson, a consultant and Citrix

engineer at the Clearwater, Fla. solutions provider.

There are lots of ways to deliver enterprise applications to mobile devices. Organizations can buy an enterprise app store platform from any number of vendors, or they can build their own. These app stores can make a combina-tion of in-house apps and third-party public apps available to users. Or, organizations may opt to publish their in-house apps to public app stores, like the Apple App Store or Google Play. Other options include virtualizing and porting legacy Windows applications, devel-oping Web-based apps and deploying apps from the cloud.

All of these methods can help IT overcome the problem of shadow IT—users going around organizational rules to access the apps and services they really want.

“Users will go out and get their own thing if the enterprise doesn’t offer it,” said Rich-ard Absalom, a senior analyst at U.K.-based research firm Ovum.

Enterprise app stores are an increasingly popular method for IT to take matters into its own hands. By 2017, 25% of organizations will have an enterprise app store for delivering cor-porate apps to mobile devices and desktops,

L


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according to Gartner’s “Enterprise App Stores Can Increase the ROI of the App Portfolio” report.

BYO APP STOREWith an enterprise app store, companies make applications available through a secure portal accessible only by its employees. Users sim-ply log into the app store and choose the apps they need.

“Whether the [apps] are company-devel-oped or publicly available, the best enterprise app stores will provide a secure gateway,” Absalom said.

These app stores cut down on a lot of the problems that can come with accessing a con-sumer-oriented, public app store. Public stores take control out of IT’s hands, potentially opening the door to security issues or unau-thorized user access. They are also specific to one mobile OS, but with a private app store, organizations can cater to all the platforms their users’ access.

For a small healthcare company like Thomp-son’s, that security and control is key.

The apps they deliver through Citrix Store-front often carry client data, including a

ticketing service app and a log tracking app to monitor clients’ software implementations. When there’s an issue with the customer’s software, that app alerts Thompson’s com-pany and relays data about the problem—all of which is secure through Storefront. When a user accesses an app, it’s provided as an XML file and launches the executable from a server in the data center, with SecureICA encryption between the client and server.

“It’s very safe,” Thompson said. “In that type of setup, all of your data is still in the data cen-ter; it’s not on the person’s device.”

PLAYING HOST TO APP STORESA variety of vendors offer enterprise app stores, from large mobility players such as IBM and Citrix to emerging vendors such as Partnerpedia, Apperian, AppDirect and Embarcadero. Many companies implementing enterprise app stores today are large, multi-na-tional organizations, but it’s viable for smaller companies, too, because it’s not all that expen-sive, Absalom said.

App stores often come bundled in larger enterprise mobility management (EMM) prod-ucts, which tend to offer monthly per-user


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pricing. Microsoft charges about $7.50 per user per month for its whole Enterprise Mobility Management suite, while a specialized mobile application management provider may be closer to $3 per user per month—a more feasi-ble price range for small businesses, Absalom

said. And Citrix makes StoreFront free for its XenApp and XenDesktop customers.

“These vendors are all fighting for business so will probably base their pricing on what customers say they can get from competitors,” Absalom said. “So the advice is: Shop around and negotiate.”

Organizations can decide whether to host app store platforms like Storefront on-prem-ises, or they can enlist a third-party cloud

service such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services to host the store. Running an app store in the cloud can ease provisioning, management and permissions control.

“It takes a lot of burden off the infrastructure because you don’t have to have it in house,” said Mike Nelson, a consultant and solutions architect at storage provider Atlantis Comput-ing. “It’s really easy to go in and provision this stuff in the cloud. It’s just as easy for a person to log into Azure, then load their apps from there.”

The cloud approach is even more common for companies that don’t develop in-house mobile applications but simply want to pro-vide third-party enterprise apps though an app store, Nelson said. In that scenario, organiza-tions can use cloud vendors’ proprietary app stores such as Amazon Marketplace, which offers business apps from Microsoft, IBM, SAP and other vendors.

MOBILE APPS GO PUBLIC Not all organizations have the expertise, resources and staff to handle a private app store deployment—whether it’s in house or in the cloud. Plus, end users tend to like what

69%of full-time employees access corporate data from

a personally owned smartphone or tablet

SOURCE: OVUM’S MULTI-MARKET EMPLOYEE MOBILITY SURVEY, 2014


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they know, and today’s consumers know Apple and Google.

For those reasons, some companies custom-ize popular third-party apps or deploy their own apps through public app stores. This method reduces the management headaches that come with monitoring a private app store, but organizations still have to deal with the challenges of publishing to Apple’s App Store or Google Play, Nelson said.

“It used to be almost impossible to get an app through the iTunes store unless you gave your first born to Apple and said, ‘Hey, publish my app,’” he said. “Now it’s a little easier.”

The difficulty lies in the ability to test your app, Nelson said.

Before even submitting an app to the App Store for approval, developers have to go through Apple’s beta testing. This process involves inviting testers to download the app through iTunes Connect or distributing the app through an ad hoc provisioning profile.

Then developers must gather the testers’ feed-back, analyze the results and make necessary changes, which could take weeks or months. Finally, the app goes to Apple’s App Review, which generally takes about another week.

But there’s a reason Apple has such a long, rigorous process for testing and approv-ing apps. The company wants high-quality, high-functioning apps, because a bad app makes Apple look bad, Thompson said.

“Apple is concerned with their brand,” Thompson said. “They’ve realized that the customer experience can be curbed by a bad app.”

Fortunately for Android-heavy organiza-tions, the Google Play Store process is a little

51%of employees said their employer

provides access to apps through an enterprise app store or portal

SOURCE: OVUM’S MULTI-MARKET EMPLOYEE MOBILITY SURVEY, 2014

A growing number of vendors offer platforms for building corporate app stores.

http://searchcloudapplications.techtarget.com/feature/Vendors-offer-variety-of-options-for-building-corporate-app-stores


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friendlier, Absalom said. It can take only a few hours to get an app approved, and Google puts fewer restrictions on what makes it through—but that means some apps in the Play Store may not be of the highest quality.

But even once an organization gets its app through these hoops, public app stores pro-vide fewer management capabilities for IT. It’s more difficult to apply permissions and harder to track who’s using the app. That’s why a lot of organizations reserve public app store deploy-ment for small to mid-tier applications and

small groups of employees, Nelson said. And while some companies want to tweak

third-party apps to their liking before offering them to users, it’s not always a good idea to do a lot of customization, he said.

“What users want and what management wants seems to never end,” he said. “More times than often, what you get out of the pack-age is good enough.” l

ALYSSA WOOD is the managing editor of Modern Mobility. Follow her on Twitter: @AlyssaLaura22.

From WhatIs.com: An enterprise app store is a Web portal through which end users can access, download and install corporate-approved software applications.

https://twitter.com/AlyssaLaura22

http://searchconsumerization.techtarget.com/definition/enterprise-app-store-enterprise-application-store


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How We Use Mobile AppsMobile usage analytics show how and when users access apps—if at all.


SOURCE: SWRVE’S 2014 REPORT “MOBILE APPS: THE DATA”

MINUTES

Users Get Engaged

Do You Have the Time?

FUN FACTS

One-and-Done Apps

Users who re-open an app within 24-48 hours of their

first session

+74+S24-48 hours

26%

Users who remain active seven days after their

first session

+87+S7 days

13%

8-10 p.m. When app usage peaks

15%of all sessions occur during this period

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Sessions last less than a minute

Sessions last more than 10 minutes13%

34%5min 7sec

average session length time


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To Mobilize or Not to Mobilize? That is the question. But by understanding workflows, IT won’t end up like Hamlet.

WHEN YOU SPEND a lot of time talking mobile strategy, you end up talking about all the things you can fix with mobility and the increases in efficiency and productivity it brings. It’s easy to be swept up by the tide, thinking that if mobile works for one app or process, it must work for all.

Mobile really isn’t that simple. It doesn’t always make sense to mobilize everything, and figuring out what you should and should not do is a job in itself.

When you start the mobile journey, it’s easy.

There is so much low-hanging fruit: Email, calendar and contacts are table stakes. Every-one wants to be able to access those apps on smartphones and tablets. After that, most organizations’ strategies are based on looking at their processes and workflows and figuring out which aspects make sense to mobilize at certain points in time. Take expenses, for example: It makes more sense to mobilize your expenses when they are happening, rather than doing it at your desk a month later.

Some things that are easy to mobilize, however, shouldn’t be. It depends on the job being done. For instance, it’s very easy to use Photoshop on a tablet. Yet, when color fidelity and speed are an issue, I would rather be at a machine with a color-calibrated monitor and a large screen with a lot of pixels. Ask most photo editors, and they would prefer such a setup every time. An onsite photographer, on

The UX Factor | BRIAN KATZ

Some things that are easy to mobilize,

shouldn’t be. It depends on the job

being done.


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the other hand, may prefer to do some simple edits at a shoot on a mobile device. Different jobs have different requirements, and you should match the workflow to those needs.

When it comes to legacy systems, you can get the biggest bang for your buck if you mobi-lize them, but it may take the most effort. First, look to see if the systems come with an API for data access. You can always build a mobile app that uses the API. If there isn’t an API, look at what the system is used for. Is it something that can be part of a mobile workflow? If it isn’t, leave it be. No matter the amount of time and effort spent to mobilize, you won’t achieve tangible benefits.

If a legacy system can integrate into a mobile workflow, you can use application or desktop virtualization technologies to make it available on smartphones and tablets. If the expected efficiency and productivity gains of your users outweigh the cost of this deployment, then you are golden. But make sure to consider: Will your users get any real use out of it? It didn’t take companies very

long to realize that Outlook, for instance, was designed for a mouse and didn’t work well on a touch-enabled tablet screen. Closely exam-ine any system that can’t be readily modified to have a touch interface. If there is no return on your investment of time and money to mobilize a legacy app or system, use it as is until you can find a better way to address the workflow.

Mobility is an approach to work that gives people the right tool at the right time. A tool isn’t just an app or just a device, but the right combination of the two that allows users to get their jobs done. When you reimagine workflows for this age of Internet-connected devices, you know which pieces it makes sense to mobilize. Some things work better on a PC, while others makes better sense on a tablet or mobile phone. It’s the combination of uses across a workflow that really shows the power of mobile. l

BRIAN KATZ is an enterprise mobility expert who writes the A Screw’s Loose blog. Follow him on Twitter: @bmkatz.

http://www.ascrewsloose.com/

http://twitter.com/bmkatz


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Why You Need Mobile InfrastructureApps can’t do what users and IT need them to do without strong back-end support.

EXPANDING MOBILE USAGE will spur IT modern-ization initiatives to avoid the high costs of maintaining legacy applications and their associated infrastructure.

The average company spends the majority of its IT budget maintaining legacy applica-tions that fail to meet the changing competi-tive needs of the business, according to VDC Research. Secure and feature-rich mobile applications, however, offer users new ways to

streamline their daily workflows and be more productive. This opportunity is significant, as most businesses have yet to extend beyond horizontal applications such as email, messag-ing and calendars.

For that reason, VDC sees mobile enable-ment as a significant catalyst in boosting infra-structure spend, as organizations realize that legacy applications and infrastructure con-sume a disproportionate percentage of their IT budgets.

The most useful mobile enterprise appli-cations are connected to back-end services. But this approach creates challenges for IT from management, security and support perspectives.

Overcoming those challenges will ulti-mately require investments in modern infra-structure built for real-time interconnectivity, flexibility and ease of administration.

Under the Hood | ERIC KLEIN

IT professionals must reconsider how they deliver

critical mobile services to users and how new work patterns affect their infrastructure.


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SECURING MOBILE INFRASTRUCTUREAs the opportunity to benefit from consum-er-oriented mobile becomes more pronounced, IT departments are at risk of losing control. IT professionals must reconsider how they deliver critical mobile services to users and how new work patterns affect their infra-structure. The slow pace of enterprise mobile enablement has led to frustrated users, who can move forward on their own without IT visibility.

To maintain control, IT pros need to demon-strate that not only can they move quickly to roll out mobile applications, but that they can offer the quality of service and user experience that users expect. That’s especially complex when managing a bring your own device (BYOD) program, particularly once an orga-nization enables the workforce with access to mobile corporate content on a 24/7 basis.

Security remains a key barrier to truly enabling users’ personal devices. The security landscape is in a state of constant change, challenging IT to assess the best ways to secure and manage a multitude of mobile devices on diverse platforms. Securing the

network perimeter is a de facto position in the enterprise, but that’s not always enough in an increasingly mobile environment—particularly when you consider the proliferation of wireless connections and the potentially uncontrolled usage of apps.

FUTURE MOBILE INVESTMENTSOrganizations will need more advanced tech-nology as they begin to implement best prac-tices for enterprise mobility. To date, the lion’s share of mobile IT investments has been in enterprise mobility management products, but key mobile infrastructure elements are also necessary, including enterprise small cells, network access control and next-generation firewalls and VPNs.

Organizations that do not begin the move toward mobile IT modernization and the necessary infrastructure investments will soon find their businesses lagging behind competitors’. l

ERIC KLEIN is director of mobile software at VDC Research in Natick, Mass. Follow him on Twitter: @eakleiner.

http://twitter.com/eakleiner


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VMI: Like VDI, but for Mobile Apps Virtual mobile infrastructure makes secure mobile applications available on any device.

VIRTUAL MOBILE INFRASTRUCTURE is an emerg-ing technology that’s conceptually similar to remote desktop technologies. It’s getting a lot of attention right now, along with a healthy dose of skepticism.

As with virtual desktop infrastructure, vir-tual mobile infrastructure (VMI) hosts an operating system in a data center, where it can be accessed remotely by various endpoints. The difference with VMI is that it hosts a mobile OS instead of a desktop OS. The cli-ents are mobile apps, and the remote display

protocols are specifically designed to handle touch inputs and mobile connections. With VMI, you can deliver a data center-hosted mobile application to a mobile device running on any platform.

Since the OS runs in the data center, no corporate data is ever present on the mobile device, which makes VMI ideal for high-secu-rity environments, highly regulated industries and bring your own device programs. Mobile apps hosted in the data center can also take advantage of being physically close to enter-prise resources and on the same network—making them run smoother on the client device.

To date, all VMI products use Android as the hosted OS, because Apple won’t allow iOS to run on other manufacturers’ hardware. VMI client apps can be written for any platform, though. Vendors that provide VMI include

Deep Dive | JACK MADDEN

VMI provides a better user experience on mobile devices

than desktop virtualization does, because its apps are built

for a mobile interface.


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Hypori, Raytheon, Remotium, Trend Micro and Nubo.

WHY TRY VMI?VMI provides a better user experience on mobile devices than desktop virtualization does, because its apps are built for a mobile interface instead of a physical keyboard and mouse. It also makes enterprise app develop-ment easier. There’s no need to create separate apps for different mobile OSes, because users can access the Android-based VMI app from any device, whether it’s an iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry or tablet of their choosing. Developers can also rely on the very nature of VMI to make apps and their data secure, instead of having to build security features on their own.

In addition, VMI provides a way to separate work and personal apps that’s free from

the compromises associated with other mobile app management (MAM) technologies. For example, MAM techniques like app wrapping and software development kits are limited to particular apps, and device-based MAM faces limited support on smartphones and tablets. VMI avoids both of these tradeoffs by allowing any app to be managed on any device.

BUMPS IN THE VMI ROADThe obvious challenge with VMI is the need for network connectivity. VMI is simply not an option for offline uses. Many people are also skeptical about latency and fidelity over mobile connections, but VMI was developed specifically for this scenario. While you’ll never mistake it for a native experience, most VMI products offer quite good performance over Wi-Fi and 4G connections.

There are several other more significant roadblocks that VMI vendors have to over-come. First, any vendor may use the Android Open Source Project as they please. How-ever, the Google Mobile Services that many apps use are not open; Google must approve devices that access these services. That isn’t a problem for most mainstream Android tablets

Brian Madden explains why enterprises need to get ready for virtual mobile infrastructure.

http://searchconsumerization.techtarget.com/feature/Finally-used-to-VDI-Now-get-ready-for-virtual-mobile-infrastructure

http://searchconsumerization.techtarget.com/feature/Finally-used-to-VDI-Now-get-ready-for-virtual-mobile-infrastructure


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and phones, but VMI vendors are still working to get data center-hosted versions of Android certified.

Hosting Android in the data center presents technical obstacles, too. VMI vendors must provide some sort of hypervisor or Linux con-tainer system to host the Android instances, and they have to ensure that it can scale appro-priately. Providers must decide whether to use an x86-compatible version of Android or to use the regular ARM version on top of an emu-lator. There needs to be a way to create and manage Android instances and to push and configure apps within them.

VMI must also take user niceties into account. These products need to find a way for OS features like push notifications to be redirected to the VMI client apps. And remote protocols for Android need to support more

than just touch events and the display. For a solid user experience, they have to support audio, location data, screen size, orientation and cameras.

Finally, while desktop virtualization is often promoted as a way to extend legacy applica-tions to mobile devices, this is not the case with VMI. Some mobile apps will not translate well to other platforms, so customers still have to develop or source mobile versions of mis-sion-critical apps.

For most enterprise mobility use cases, local native apps remain the best approach. But because of VMI’s unique attributes, there are still many valid use cases that will support it. l

JACK MADDEN is the author of Enterprise Mobility Manage-ment: Everything You Need to Know about MDM, MAM and BYOD and a blogger at BrianMadden.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jackmadden.

http://www.brianmadden.com/

https://twitter.com/jackmadden

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DEVICE SPOTLIGHT

WHY BUY? Apple is rarely first to market with new products, but they’re usually the best when they arrive. Apple Watch continues that tradition with a premium build and more capabilities than Android Wear. It func-tions like a mini iPhone on your wrist, complete with Siri, messaging and hundreds of apps.

SPECS: Apple Watch comes in two sizes, 38mm and 42mm. There are three versions: Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and the premium Apple Watch Edition. They are the same functionally but differ in terms of build materials and replaceable bands. The aluminum Sport ships with a durable rubber band; the Watch and Watch Edition are stainless steel and 14-karat gold, respectively, with an array of leather and steel bands.

ENTERPRISE PROS AND CONS: Apple Watch is the most advanced wearable, with a swipe- and tap-based navigation scheme aided by a physical watch crown. It proves especially useful for quick text replies, notifi-cations at a glance and directions—a plus for workers who need hands-free capabilities in industries such as engineering and manufacturing.

That said, the iPhone offers most of the same capa-bilities and does it better. Given that Apple Watch needs to be paired with an iPhone for full functionality, it’s ultimately redundant. There’s no reason for a business user to own one at this point. Of course, many said the same thing about the iPhone and the iPad when they launched.

JAMISON CUSH is executive editor of TechTarget’s Technol-

ogy Guide. Follow him on Twitter: @TGJamison.

PRICE: Apple Watch starts at $349 for the 38mm Apple Watch Sport and $399 for the 42mm version. It ranges up to a whopping $17,000 for the luxurious 18-karat gold Edition.

Apple WatchDo you really need a smartwatch? The easy answer was no—until Apple entered the market with the most hyped wearable to date.

https://twitter.com/tgjamison


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Citrix Aims to Software-Define EverythingThe company’s longtime leader opens up about Workspace Services, VMware and his extended tenure as CEO.

LAST YEAR AT this time, Mark Templeton danced his way onto the Citrix Synergy keynote stage for what he thought was the last time.

Citrix’s president and CEO was about to retire knowing he’d led the company’s growth from a one-product vendor to a tech giant with more than $3 billion in revenue. Citrix has come a long way from the early days of Ter-minal Services, and its new strategy centers on delivering Workspace Services—desktops, apps and data—to users wherever they are.

Here, Templeton discusses the company’s

recent reorganization, its software-defined-ev-erything strategy and why he decided to stay on as CEO after all.

Why did you decide your story with the company needed to continue?My intention to retire was driven by some personal things that were preventing me from being the CEO that Citrix needed at the time. I took some leave in 2013 related to the loss of our youngest son, and to be really honest, it was debilitating. It blew my pilot light out. If you’ve seen me enough and understand Citrix, when my pilot light is out, that’s serious. I don’t think I’d ever had my pilot light blown out.

Face Time with MARK TEMPLETON

TEMPLETON


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But I was excited on that stage because we were beginning to write the next chapter. After Synergy … some things changed in our lives, and my family got behind me. I told the board that if they wanted to consider an additional candidate, I would be honored to be that addi-tional candidate.

Describe the next wave of transformation and Citrix’s part in it.It’s really to prepare the company to soft-ware-define the workplace, which is the next big thing technology will enable. We have seen this with the software-defined data center and virtualizing the data center. Doing that opens a new range of possibilities that includes a dif-ferent approach to flexibility, security and to creating user experiences.

That same set of ideas can be applied to vir- tualize the tools used in the workplace, whether it’s desks or whiteboards or Polycoms. Software- define all of that to give [employees] infinite and unfettered access to all of these tools.

What is it about Citrix Workspace Services that has companies buying in? Customers are realizing the desktop and the classic Windows apps that used to be the cen-ter of all computing are now components of all computing. Desktops were hard-coded to particular devices; workspaces are not. [Work-spaces] are available and useful from a broad range of devices, whether it is a small screen on a smartphone, a tablet or other new com-munication devices.

Customers … see potential to distribute dig-ital tools, not as desktops but as workspaces, in a device-independent way. IT can choose devices for security. They can enable a range of capabilities on something like a Chrome-book that doesn’t have persistent data.

Where do things stand in the aftermath of Citrix decommissioning some products and eliminating 900 positions?When you remove layers, decision making is faster and easier, and we are seeing the results of that. We have lowered our investment dramatically in products like VDI-in-a-Box, XenApp Fundamentals and AppDNA. In some areas we are eliminating the product and will remain in maintenance mode until we can

LISTEN to the full interview on the Modern Mobility Podcast.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/modern-mobility-podcast/id977183980


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move customers to a replacement product or these technologies will become features of larger products. AppDNA will be included in our Workspace Cloud to make onboard-ing physical Windows apps to virtual apps extremely easy.

We are still working our way through this process, which no one likes, but it is part of re-crafting the company and aligning our organization’s strategy to the velocity of the industry.

Citrix and VMware continually leapfrog one another. Is it important to get new tech out first? It is important to show customers where you are leading them, and that comes with some risk of showing your cards to competitors. Enterprise IT organizations are in their own transformation cycle. All of them have to deal with legacy infrastructure, applications and user communities—people who don’t work mobile because they were born analog.

But the momentum has to go to the new age,

the millennial employee. We are an important bridge for customers as they evolve from a leg-acy world to a millennial world [that is] driven by digital work styles, mobile devices and dif-ferent styles of communication.

Some light questions we ask all interviewees: What’s your favorite movie?Seabiscuit. It shows how people can come together and be greater than the sum of the parts. They can accomplish amazing things with courage and conviction and belief.

If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?Positano, Italy.

What’s the best dish you can cook?Whatever dish my wife plans, and I’m the sous chef. l

BRIDGET BOTELHO is senior news director of TechTarget’s Data Center and Virtualization and End-User Computing media groups. Follow her on Twitter: @bridgetbotelho.

https://twitter.com/bridgetbotelho


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Codeless App Development IT cracks the code to building lightweight mobile applications without advanced development skills.

MANY COMPANIES FACE the challenge of develop-ing custom mobile applications without suffi-cient resources or coding expertise. For those organizations, help is on the horizon with codeless application development platforms.

With codeless app development, workers with little development experience can easily add features—including geo-location, maps and the ability to take a signature directly on a device—into a mobile app via a drag-and-drop interface.

These tools will become critically important in the coming years. By 2018, more than half of all employee-facing mobile apps will be made

by enterprise business analysts using codeless tools, according to Gartner’s “Predicts 2015: Mobile and Wireless” report.

CODE OR NO CODE?The benefits of using codeless tools for mobile app development are clear: No knowledge of complex code is required, and the platforms spit out simple, reusable models on which to build applications. This approach reduces the number of applications IT needs to outsource to developer partners. It also frees up experi-enced developers to focus their efforts on crit-ical business-to-consumer apps, which often contribute more significantly to the company’s bottom line.

Codeless development also speeds up the process of creating apps for straightforward projects such as consumer surveys or mobile-based data entry. This lets IT create more efficient, mobilized business processes for

Trending | JAKE O’DONNELL


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employees in less time than it would take for more complicated apps to be built. But not every app is a good fit for codeless develop-ment. Some internal apps may still require more heavy lifting with code, such as applica-tions requiring rich graphical interfaces.

Codeless capabilities are now significant features in mobile application development platforms (MADPs) including Kony’s Mod-eler, Salesforce1 Lightning, Oracle’s Mobile Application Framework, IBM Worklight and SAP Web IDE. Some codeless MADP offerings

also include back-end integration capabilities, application templates rather than reusable components, and tools for both native and hybrid development. l

JAKE O’DONNELL is a news writer in TechTarget’s End-User Computing Media Group. Follow him on Twitter: @JakeODonnell_TT.

50%of business-to-employee mobile apps will be

made with codeless tools by 2018.

SOURCE: GARTNER’S “PREDICTS 2015: MOBILE AND WIRELESS” REPORT

As the need for enterprise mobile apps grows, more codeless dev tools are coming out of the woodwork.

More than

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The Summer of Mobility is Upon UsWhy spend your days at the beach when you can immerse yourself in the world of mobile technology?

l Apple Worldwide Developers ConferenceJune 8-12Moscone Center, San Franciscodeveloper.apple.com/wwdc

Apple’s WWDC typically serves as the com-ing-out party for new iOS and Mac OS X ver-sions. Attendees learn about new OS features, and some sessions even focus on enterprise management.

l Mobile FirstJune 9-12Hilton Union Square, San Franciscomobilefirst15.com

At MobileIron’s four-day user conference, attendees can get hands-on experience with the company’s latest enterprise mobility man-agement (EMM) products. Sessions will focus on four key areas: apps, operating system-spe-cific management, security and EMM deploy-ment. This year, for the first time, Mobile First will be open to media and analysts as well as users.

l BriForumJuly 20-22The Westin Denver Downtown, Denverbriforum.com/US

Conference Calendar | COLIN STEELE

BRIFORUM ATTENDEES HEAR FROM BRIAN MADDEN.

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The flagship U.S. version of TechTarget’s end-user computing conference makes its Rocky Mountains debut, offering three days of in-depth technical content. Speakers include Modern Mobility columnists Jack Madden, who will present an overview of virtual mobile infrastructure, and Brian Katz, who will lead two sessions: “How Not to Build a Crapplica-tion” and “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the MAM.” Attendees can also network with vendors in the exhibit hall and make new friends at the Dinner with Strangers event.

l VMworldAug. 30-Sept. 3Moscone Center, San Franciscovmworld.com

VMworld made its reputation as an IT infra-structure event, but as VMware pushed into the mobility market on its own and then acquired

AirWatch, more end-user content crept in. It’s too early to tell what the server virtualization pioneer has planned for this year, but customers will want to hear about the latest advancements in its EMM and application delivery products—and how they fit in with VMware’s data center technologies. l

TAKE IN THE VIEWS OF SAN FRAN AT THIS

YEAR’S VMWORLD.

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Modern Mobility is a SearchConsumerization.com e-publication.

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Rebecca Kitchens, Publisher, [email protected]

TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466 www.techtarget.com

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