Contact: Scott Denne Michael Cote Chris Hazelton
Citrix picks up Framehawk just three months after Oracle took out Bitzer Mobile, which, like Framehawk, was developing products to enable enterprises to move their data and applications onto employees’ mobile devices. While there’s a real need for this service, the products have proved relatively simple for larger vendors to duplicate.
There’s a compelling story to tell around the need for such technology: the bring-your-own-device trend means employees are demanding access from devices of their choice, which puts pressure on IT to focus on controlling mobile apps and data directly, rather than just the device. Venture money has followed that story, with Framehawk having raised $16m and Bitzer landing $6m. And these types of app and data silo technologies have indeed become must-haves – so much so that the big enterprise mobile management players have built similar offerings, making it more difficult for the pure-play vendors to gain traction.
Citrix itself will not be offering Framehawk as a stand-alone product. Instead, it’s picking up the technology and engineering team with the aim of integrating it into XenApp and XenDesktop to improve their ability to operate across subpar wireless networking conditions. This makes sense, as delivering applications in methods like this (i.e., not installed locally on each desktop) is Citrix’s core business, and must be defended and evolved.
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