Citrix Acquires Zenprise in BYOD Play

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In the world of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), enterprises need to manage devices and applications. That BYOD challenge is something that Citrix is aiming to solve with its acquisition of Mobile Device Management (MDM) vendor Zenprise.

Citrix expects that the acquisition of Zenprise will close during the first quarter of 2013 and is not currently disclosing the financial terms of acquisition.

During a press conference call to discuss the deal, Sumit Dhawan, VP and GM Mobile Solutions at Citrix explained that customers are looking for a complete solution to be able to manage their devices, apps and data.

Citrix already has a solution called CloudGateway that delivers the app control piece of BYOD. Dhawan noted that by acquiring Zenprise, Citrix will be able to deliver a complete product line to fully enable BYOD.

According to Dhawan the choice of acquiring Zenprise was a clear one, as they are the market leader in the MDM space with over a million devices under management today. Zenprise offers both on premise as well as cloud-based MDM solutions. He added that the Zenprise product portfolio is highly complementary to what Citrix already has with the CloudGateway product.

The two companies have a shared vision to enable people to work and play from anywhere. Amit Pandey, CEO of Zenprise, said during that the call that it is clear that the BYOD trend is here to stay for mobile.

“There is an onslaught of devices in the enterprise today and most of these devices are untrusted,” Pandey said. “We’ve always had the sense that devices are just the beginning and really it is about putting mobile to work.”

Pandey noted that his company was already starting to move into application management. Now Citrix is bringing all the missing pieces to the table. The challenge with mobile app management is about the vast array of options that users have from an operating system perspective. Pandey said that it’s no longer a Windows-only application world – there are now applications on multiple mobile operating systems.

Deal Rationale

Pandey stressed that from his perspective the deal is a perfect fit of two companies. He explained that the joint offering will be a complete BYOD solution. The foundational layer is the device management component. On top of that, the solution provides application and document management. Finally, the complete joint solution includes productivity and collaboration.

“Citrix brings world class app and data management and Zenprise brings the industry’s leading MDM,” Pandey said. “We both see eye to eye on where this is going in the future.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.