This content is part of the Essential Guide: Digital workspaces upgrade IT delivery, management benefits

DXC, Citrix partner on Saab digital workspace platform

A digital workspace platform at Saab combines components from DXC, a global systems integrator, and Citrix, which sees opportunities beyond virtualization; more news from the week.

Citrix and DXC Technology, a Citrix partner, are collaborating on a digital workspace platform for aerospace and defense company Saab, a project that underscores Citrix's goal of moving beyond its roots in virtualization.

Working together, Citrix and DXC are providing a digital workspace through which Saab offers its 16,000 employees distributed access to information and tools, as well as SaaS, web and mobile applications. Citrix contributes its Citrix Workspace, which centralizes access to enterprise applications and files, and provides user access from any device through single sign-on. At Saab, Citrix Workspace runs under DXC's MyWorkStyle offering, a collaboration platform that lets organizations share information and interact via email, voice, video and documents.

Saab's digital workspace platform was introduced in 2015, with global rollout continuing over the last few years.

"The environment continues to evolve to provide additional benefits," said

Christer Nordberg, account general manager at DXC.

DXC's work at Saab dates back to at least 2000, when its predecessor company, CSC, entered a strategic IT partnership with the aerospace and defense contractor. DXC launched in 2017 following the merger of CSC and HPE's IT services line of business.

Citrix's global systems integrator ties

DXC is one of about 30 companies classified as Citrix System Integrators, according to Tim Minahan, executive vice president of business strategy and chief marketing officer at Citrix. That Citrix partner category includes such global systems integrator firms and outsourcing companies as IBM and Fujitsu. Citrix System Integrators may use Citrix technology as part of an overarching digital transformation project or to support a customer's infrastructure initiative, Minahan said.

Tim Minahan, executive vice president, business strategy and chief marketing officer at CitrixTim Minahan

The Citrix-DXC offering aims to address two challenges at Saab. First, Saab needed to enable employees to access corporate technology wherever they happened to be -- Saab, based in Stockholm, operates in more than 80 locations around the world.

Second, the defense firm, which handles classified data, needed a way to provide contractors and subcontractors with access to applications and data, while maintaining a secure environment that restricts access to sensitive information. To that end, Citrix Workspace lets administrators tailor access for each user, Minahan explained. A contractor or subcontractor can be granted access to only the applications and content they need to execute their role on a particular project. For example, a contractor could be provided access to a CAD/CAM application or a specific engineering drawing. Citrix Workspace uses the Citrix Cloud service for administration and control.

Key features

"One of the key features is that [Saab's digital workspace] allows companies to handle information in a secure way, while keeping their business very agile and fast," Nordberg said. "This is really important in a world with increased levels of cyberthreats and regulations" such as the General Data Protection Regulation, which protects information in the cloud.

The environment continues to evolve to provide additional benefits.
Christer Nordbergaccount general manager, DXC

Craig Stilwell, vice president of worldwide partner strategy and sales at Citrix, said cloud-driven offerings such as Citrix Workspace have opened an "amazing opportunity to really go beyond virtualization" -- a key theme at the Citrix Partner Summit, held earlier this month. The company's traditional app and desktop virtualization products represent the preferred way to work for about 30% of a given organization's users. Citrix Workspace, however, gives the vendor and its Citrix partner allies a way to approach the other 70% of users, dramatically expanding the addressable market, Stilwell said.

LogicMonitor readies partner program

LogicMonitor, a provider of a cloud-based performance monitoring platform, plans to unveil the company's first formal channel program in February.

The multilevel channel initiative will include a partner portal, deal registration and education among other features. Mark Banfield, chief revenue officer at LogicMonitor, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., said managed service providers (MSPs) represent a critical route to market for the company, especially in the small and medium-sized business sector.

LogicMonitor sells its monitoring technology to MSPs and enterprise IT customers. In addition to the new partner program, LogicMonitor is dedicating personnel such as account managers and customer success managers to specifically focus on MSP customers.

MSPs can also anticipate a LogicMonitor community event that will debut in June in Austin, Texas. A date has yet to be set for the conference, dubbed Level Up.

LogicMonitor, meanwhile, has rolled out two new offerings for monitoring microservices and containerized applications: Kubernetes container monitoring and LM Service Insight.

Kubernetes container monitoring is "particularly relevant for DevOps teams looking to quickly deploy apps and services," Banfield said.

LM Service Insight, meanwhile, enables the grouping of resource that supports a particular application, service or cluster, according to LogicMonitor. Banfield said that offering lets administrators monitor services, not just the individual technologies underneath those services. This approach provides "better visibility into the availability and performance" of service, he added.

OneLogin partners with Ingram Micro

OneLogin, an identity and access management vendor, revealed plans to grow its U.S. channel footprint through a new a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro.

Under the agreement, Ingram Micro will offer OneLogin's unified access management platform to its North American solution providers. The vendor will also join Ingram Micro's cloud marketplace and augment other products in the distributor's portfolio, according to Matthew Hurley, vice president of global channels, strategic alliances and professional services at OneLogin, based in San Francisco.

"We are immediately embarking with Ingram on a western United States [channel] coverage model," Hurley said. He noted that OneLogin has built a channel partner presence in eastern and central U.S.

OneLogin has been amid a recent period of expansion. Earlier this month, the company closed $100 million in growth financing.

Public cloud expansion continues

Public cloud adoption is poised to continue in 2019, according to a NetEnrich survey. According to the survey, 85% of respondents cited moderate or extensive production use of cloud infrastructure and 80% said they had moved at least a quarter of their applications and workloads to public cloud platforms.

As for cloud worries, 33% of respondents identified security as the biggest concern with cloud migration, while 20% cited privacy. NetEnrich, based in San Jose, Calif., polled 100 IT decision-makers at companies with 500 or more employees.

Other news

  • Cloud and managed services provider Rackspace introduced a suite of managed database services for AWS. The new services aim to help customers use Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue and Amazon Athena, according to Rackspace.
  • ID Agent, a dark web monitoring and identity theft protection company, said it bolstered its Goal Assist support services program for its MSP partners. Goal Assist will feature hands-on assistance in customer interactions, sales team training and prospect meeting support, ID Agent said.
  • MSP software vendor ConnectWise made several changes to its executive leadership team. The vendor promoted the company's executive vice president and COO, Jason Magee, to president and COO. Chief product officer Craig Fulton will now serve as chief customer success officer, a newly created role, ConnectWise said. Additionally, the company named Jeff Bishop, vice president of Ecosystem, as its new chief product officer.
  • Zix Corp., an email security vendor, has agreed to acquire AppRiver, a provider of cloud-based cybersecurity offerings. AppRiver works with a network of 4,500 MSPs.
  • Navisite said it has been recognized as a Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Service Provider. Navisite, based in Andover, Mass., is part of Spectrum Enterprise, the enterprise arm of Charter Communications Inc.
  • Intapp is targeting professional services firms with its Intapp Walls 7.0 product, which the company describes as an ethical walls and confidentiality management offering.

Market Share is a news roundup published every Friday.

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