Citrix has extended its partnership with Google to bring its flagship Workspace product to customers running their companies’ infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Businesses will be encouraged to migrate to the cloud with the promise of further integration between Google’s suite of productivity apps and Citrix’s core platform, manifesting in-part as integration with Google Calendar, G-Suite and GCP-based authentication tools.
“We’re going to surface appropriately the notifications that come from G Suite’s collaboration tools into the Workspace so that context is carried forward between the collaboration tools and the individual Workspace experience,” said Citrix chief product officer PJ Hough.
The move, announced by CEO David Henshall at the company’s annual Synergy conference this year, feeds into his company’s drive to expand its cloud business. And it specifically aims to ease migration to the cloud by providing a means to integrate with Google’s ecosystem of apps and devices.
The announcement follows the company’s launch of the Citrix Workspace suite of tools, a work in progress since at least 2014, at last year’s Synergy conference, and its collaboration with Microsoft Azure.
Companies using Google Cloud could previously utilise Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops with their systems, but this announcement marks a full integration with the Workspace suite.
Moreover, customers can expect a host of integrations with Google’s productivity apps, like the widely-used G-Suite.
Interoperability with Google’s Cloud Identity tool, for example, means company employees can use their Google or G-Suite login credentials to access Citrix Workspace. Meanwhile, Google Calendar integration means workers will automatically receive notifications on Workspace about significant events through tailored feeds.
“In the old days, all the apps people needed to do their jobs were on their laptops,” said Citrix CEO David Henshall. “Now, some are local, some are in corporate datacentres, some are in the cloud.
“In extending Citrix Workspace to Google Cloud, we’re giving companies greater flexibility and choice in how they deploy the SaaS, cloud, and web apps their employees need to be engaged and productive and a simple, efficient way to do it.”
The company says the new functionality on Google Cloud Platform will shave time employees spend cycling between up to a dozen apps on a day-to-day basis by provisioning these in one place.
Citrix also hopes to use this move as its way to solve the need for customers to have an “always-on infrastructure”, required in this day and age to maximise productivity and keep users engaged.