Citrix Intelligent Workspace - VMware VMworld 2019
Transcript
>> All right, welcome back to the CTO Dose. My name is Joep Piscar, welcome to VMworld 2019. I'm glad to be sitting down right now. I've been walking the show floor and all of the sessions, meeting up with people, so, yeah, it's good to be back in this chair again. I'm joined by Thomas Berger. He is of Citrix and we're going to talk a little bit about Citrix because it's been a while since I last talked about it. And so let's dive in.
Citrix it's the company that does VDI, right? >> Pretty much, yeah. No, we do a lot more nowadays, so VDI is probably what we are known for, for long time, virtual apps and desktops in general, but I think we have evolved quite a bit over the last couple of years. I think, I mean, the virtual, the digital workspace, evolved in itself as well, users no longer just use Windows applications, or Linux applications, they need mobile apps, they need web apps, SaaS apps, and everything in between.
Linux comes up more and more with customers, which try to get away from Microsoft every now and then. And so, obviously, we provide them all, but even beyond that, we evolved quite a bit, obviously, now we bring the content. You're not opening Word because it's a beautiful app, you open it up because you want to write a letter. And as you roam between devices and locations, you want to make sure that letter follows with you, so we blend in the content as well.
But this is what we call organizing work, essentially, and beyond that we go into guide work, that means we look into the backend applications. We see what are the tasks, what are the outstanding notifications for the user. We pull them, and show them in a personalized feed for the user, so essentially you get a to-do list from us, so you get like your front end where you can launch all these things, the content of the apps, but you get your to-do list as well, and then-- >> Hold on, how does this work?
So there's backend systems? Like I use Workday for HR, I use some system to get me to approve a visit to your conference, and you serve this up into your own, how does it work? >> That's very true, that's very true. So, what we have is we have connectors to those systems of record, what we call them. This can be Salesforce, this can be SAP, this can be Workday, or any of those commonly used SaaS applications, and on-prem applications as well, and essentially, those connectors we have, they, as the name suggests, connect to those backend systems, and understand what is going on there, they figure out what is relevant, what are the data points for this user.
They can see everything, from the notifications to what data changes, and then service it back to the user, either as a notification or an actionable insight, or Tableau might have a new cool business statistic for you, and it shows it through our Workspace, which is the point of consumption, so to say. So that's the guide work, if you like, and then, we also allow users to access specific functions, atomic functions, you could almost say, within applications, going into, like you said, like request approval for a trip to a conference, so you're not going into your travel system, whatever that might be, and then three clicks down, and then you have some form you have to fill, but you get a button like "Request Travel," and you see that form straightaway, you fill in the necessary details, you click a button and then done.
You're not switching between applications, you don't have this shift, this context switching you have to go through, but that's like very quickly done. >> It kind of reminds me of the old intranet, right. I used to have an intranet where I had a button go to my travel expenses application, go to my HR application. This kind of sounds similar. >> It sounds similar, actually that's where some customers actually could confuse as well. I think the biggest difference with those intranet solutions, even nowadays, is they, in most cases, just provide links, right?
You have your website, you click a button, and it just opens up another website, which then happens to be SAP, for example, so, obviously, we can do that too, but we can much deeper integrate with those notifications and micro apps as well. But those intranets also, in most cases, or, one could say, actually in all cases, they only talk about web applications. So if your line of business applications doesn't happen to be a website, then you're out of luck, so then you back to what they had in the past as well.
>> Right, because those systems can be, you know, old, conventional-- >> They can be old, they can be old, or sometimes you don't really have a direct path through them, or you have to first establish any kind of VPN connectivity to your on-prem, so there is a lot of ifs and ands in between. Sure, you can make a lot of things work, even intranet portals, but they're not designed to do that, right. " And maybe a bit of like social interaction, likes and comments, and internal knowledge-sharing, but they're not so much about organizing work in the sense of like providing all the resources and tools you need to get your work done.
And, they are frankly, in most cases, not really personalized, and it's like one portal for everyone, maybe for a team, but not so down to the specific individual like what we're doing. >> And so, why should I get this? I mean, as a user, I get it, you know, getting all my information in an easy format to consume, very personalized, I get that, but what's the business case, right? Why do companies want to do this? >> I think there's two big things.
One is user experience, experiences, productivity, and engagement combined together, so one is, you get your thing, your work done faster, easier. Just one reason for that is you get access to the applications and files in a much easier way on the information channel, also, you don't switch between things, and statistics say, when you do the context switch from doing one thing to another, and then going back to, let's say, writing your letter, that might take up to 20 minutes to be back in the flow to write that thing, and that's lost productivity.
" But just click the button, then this context switches goes away, or is significantly reduced, so the productivity goes up, user experience is also up in a sense, it's easier, it's nicer for user to work with, and everybody's competing for workforce nowadays, it's hard to find, talent is really hard to find, so if you give them like a modern experience, and not this old-style traditional stuff of providing access to work. >> Right, yeah. So in terms of labor productivity, I mean, I use tools like Slack, I use Microsoft Teams, and they are kind of my one-stop shop for a lot of things, right?
I get notifications within Slack, not just from other users, but from applications that I use as well, but that's kind of like a rainstorm coming out the whole time, there's not a lot of logic in there, I'm curious to how that matches up with security solution. >> Yeah, that's very true. I mean, that's the thing is like, there from the marketing, or the very first initial impression you get from Slack and Teams, and there's Mattermost, and many other workstream collaboration solutions out there.
They all promise to be, or they want to be, that one-stop shop, as you just mentioned, for getting work done. Whatever you can do, you can do it in Slack, is the famous claim they have, and it is true, if you define work as a communication thing, they are very good to enable communication between people, to reduce friction, for communication to tear down barriers in between teams, and so on, that's what they're built for, this is a team communication collaboration tool and they increase the efficiency and productivity of teams by doing so, and they also give me notifications, or like for a team in general, like a certain build is complete and now the team can react based on that, but because of all this notification, collaboration goes on in that solution, it's also very noisy place, and when you want to get work done, you usually go to quiet space, you want to have somewhere you can focus, you get your thing, your to-do task list, and you go through it one-by-one and get things done.
As a matter of fact, we use Slack at Citrix as well, and we went into the statistics of the platform, and every given day we send about 150,000 messages on Slack platform, so it is not really a thing where I get my work done. It's good for figuring out what the context of my work is, but Citrix Workspace is then where I get the work done. " Then it talks to us, we talk to the system of record, and then it goes back, so there is an integration there, and it's side-by-side.
The overlap, or the compete, if you like, happens more on the marketing side, and I think we have to figure that out. >> Yeah (laughs). So you mentioned that the chatbot, so, I mean, that doesn't just work within Teams or Slack, I'm presuming? >> No. >> I'm kind of curious how that works in a daily workflow of a user. >> You're right, it's not just in Slack or Teams, it's also in Workspace, we have an application for that where that virtual assistant live, and the virtual assistant, it differentiates from other virtual assistants like in Slack and Team, I mean, they are all bots, right, we have a whole bot app store, botstore, if that is a word, and those bots are, in use, in most cases are single-task, so one bot can do one thing really well.
" And then you can do it as well, so it gives you access to information as well as allows you to do some actions and activities. >> Kind of sounds like a no-code and low-code solution, kind of making sure that you have the specific information on the right time, the right context available to you. >> Yep, yep, that is very true, and the low-code no-code is a good point to talk about that as like what we provide out of the box with Workspace, that is 15, 20 connectors to backend systems and about 150 micro applications we developed, these are really just starting points, and customers get a, as you say, a low-code, no-code studio where they can tune everything, they can say, "Well, request me a ticket is nice, "it's a good starting point, "but I would like to alert my users "if certain number of tickets is a certain threshold, "if we go beyond that, "or if a certain probability of a deal "is raising a certain point, "we want to create a notification around that," and they can do so.
So all they need to do is, they need to understand the business requirement for it, and what are the data points available in the line of business application system of record, and then we allow you to create micro applications or notifications insights on top of that. So that's actually, skies the limit. >> Yeah. So one thing I haven't heard yet, and there's for obvious reasons, this all gathers all of the business logic, the data, all of the workflows, this is potentially very sensitive information, and so, how do you protect against data leaking out of the system like that?
How do you protect it on a device that's portable, mobile, and easy to steal? What's the security point? >> So we have a variety of tools, and essentially, what we do with Workspace, and we basically just talked about the work and in terms of applications and information, but Workspace for us can also be a platform, we built a digital workspace, and that has, essentially, an intrinsic security model in there, so this can range from managing the device, making sure it's encrypted, and if it's not, then essentially prevent access to applications.
We have security tools, or security functionality, which can put watermark on data, or only allow you a certain level of access to it. You can only read it but not print it, so there's a variety of that, but it's also, essentially, surrounding all of what we do, is an analytics, and it's called Citrix Analytics, and what it does it understands your behavior as a user, it figures out where you're connecting from, what devices are you using, how often do you connect? What kind of content do you share, or content do you consume?
What websites do you access in the internet, for example? There's a variety of data points which goes in and it creates based on that a specific risk score for you and then if that deviates too much, or if you, let's say, you're showing risky behavior like browsing websites which have a very, very bad reputation, then the risk score increases, and as it goes above a certain threshold, we can take action, so we can say, we want to make sure that user's really the one who claims he is to be, and we ask for second-factor authentication, or we say, "Now it goes beyond what we think is good," and we block access or just prevent you from accessing very sensitive applications.
Variety of things we can do. The beauty is, and I think, actually, that sets us apart from most of the companies out there, is we have the ability to understand that behavior across the whole workspace, it's not just, like, how the device functions, that security posture of the device. It's important, we can do that too, but it's just one data point. It's also important what you do on the internet, or how you share content, who consumes what, and so on. >> Yeah and that kind of comes back to, you know, it's more than just the applications, it's more than just your data.
It's how do you use it, how you use it too. >> Yeah, very true. >> Right, so if people want to know more about this solution what should they Google? Should they look you up on Twitter or LinkedIn? com, there is the whole website around organizing, guiding, and how to make it work, and I think this gets a very good starting point of what we do nowaday, and then, obviously, if they're looking for the good old Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops solution, they will find it there, but it will show how this is embedded.
This is a pillar, an important pillar, but just one pillar of that digital workspace solution we provide nowadays, and we are pretty excited about it in the team. >> That sounds good. All right, so that's it for us here at the CTO Dose, we're going to go back to VMworld for a little bit now, of course, we'll be back later with more interviews, so until then there, goodbye.
