1. White Paper
citrix.com
Simplify Your Mobile
App Strategy with
Hosted Applications
from AT&T
Empowering people to use Microsoft Windows
applications on any type of device – with full security.
2. White Paper
citrix.com
Citrix and AT&T | Mobile Workforce with Secure App Delivery
2
For convenience and productivity, people today expect to use
their mobile devices for business activities. As a result, businesses
and IT face a big challenge: how to securely deliver Windows®
based business apps to tablets and smartphones. The sheer
number of device types and mobile operating systems makes it
inefficient and cost prohibitive to develop individual application
strategies for every mobile device and platform.
Meeting these new requirements when IT teams are already resource constrained leaves many
organizations wondering if there is a better approach. What if you could gain the benefits of a
fully productive mobilized workforce, while at the same time simplifying the cost and complexity
of traditional application management?
In a mobile world, the apps and devices matter the most
When people need to get work done, it’s all about the applications. In less mobile times, it was
sufficient for IT to simply deploy business applications on corporate desktops and laptops to
provide people with all the tools their productivity depended on. Now applications are only part of
the picture—the devices people expect to use and where they use them from are equally important.
The trend towards app-centric mobile workstyles has been accelerated by a number of business
drivers including:
• The increase in remote workers and people time-slicing the workday by choosing when and
where to work means people expect equal access to applications from whatever device they
choose to use.
• People are accustomed to using powerful consumer devices to access email when they are
away from the office. Now they also want to use these devices as primary tools to access
business-critical apps.
• Consumer cloud services, app stores and ubiquitous internet access has created the expectation
of immediate access to information from anywhere, anytime.
Like most businesses, you have invested vast resources into procuring and customizing Windows
applications to support every unique aspect of your business. Now, as you think about addressing
today’s demands for mobile access, you need a simple, efficient way to mobilize your business.
3. White Paper
citrix.com
Citrix and AT&T | Mobile Workforce with Secure App Delivery
3
Rethink your mobile app strategy with hosted applications
Hosted applications that are managed by AT&T and powered by Citrix®, provide businesses with a
simpler approach to accessing and supporting Windows-based business applications. AT&T uses
Citrix XenAppTM hosted applications to help businesses transform how they operate by enabling
on-demand delivery of centrally managed applications to any computer. Now, as mobility and
BYOD bring new requirements, hosted applications are helping businesses transform their
application environment once more to let people access the applications they need on any type of
device—including their own personal tablets and smartphones.
Instead of your organization installing and maintaining applications, AT&T host the applications in
an AT&T Internet Data Center and delivers them as a secure, on-demand cloud service. Your
employees can access applications and data from any location, over any network—wired or
wireless—on any device—Windows, Mac, tablet, smartphone. Centrally secured and delivered from
the AT&T cloud, hosted applications reduce the risk of data loss or intrusion no matter the device.
User access remains secure, available and compliant, while intellectual property and sensitive
private information stays safe, because data and applications reside in AT&T’s Internet Data Center,
not on the local device.
Hosted applications – a mobile app strategy IT and users will love
Mobilize Windows-based business applications
Hosted applications make it simple to mobilize Windows apps for use on smartphones and tablets.
Instead of writing new mobile versions of your business applications, AT&T uses Citrix HDX™
Mobile technologies to tweak your application interfaces to act like native mobile apps on mobile
devices—without having to touch back-end code. An optimized mobile look and feel includes a
touch interface, multi-touch gestures, native menu controls, camera and GPS support. Mobile
friendly menus and smaller subset of functions that fit mobile use cases more efficiently than the
full-fledged desktop version make it easier for your employees to work with the apps on mobile
devices. By using a single, centrally managed application to support users on any type of device—
desktop, laptop, thin client, tablet or smartphone— you can dramatically reduce the time it takes
to make new applications available in every usage scenario simultaneously.
Simplify application access on any device
For your workforce, hosted applications makes accessing Windows applications on mobile devices
as easy as it would be on a traditional computer. Citrix Receiver™ provides a consistent point of
access to every kind of application in your environment—Windows or native mobile—on any kind
of device.
Secure sensitive data while allowing user flexibility
Instead of storing sensitive data on the device as many consumer mobile apps do, hosted
applications provide secure remote access to centrally secured and hosted content. Although
devices—and the people who use them—are mobile, the data itself stays secure and protected
within the AT&T cloud.
4. White Paper
citrix.com
Citrix and AT&T | Mobile Workforce with Secure App Delivery
4
Ensure a native-like user experience for mobilized Windows applications
Because XenApp-powered hosted applications run in AT&T Internet Data Center, alongside your
files and databases, it delivers better performance than a locally installed mobile app sending queries
across mobile networks. Hosted applications further enhance the performance of Windows
applications accessed on mobile devices by intelligently coping with the variability and packet loss
of mobile networks and improving graphics and multimedia with hardware acceleration on tablets
and smartphones.
The challenges of traditional application management in a mobile world
If your organization is considering using traditional application management approaches to app
mobility, you may soon find that doing so is neither scalable nor cost-effective. The PC-era, one-size-
fits-all method simply doesn’t work. The vast number of different types of apps, devices and mobile
platforms to support could mean accepting a lot of usability, security and performance tradeoffs. In
contrast, a custom strategy for each individual application, device and mobile platform is both time-
consuming and expensive. Carefully consider these challenges you will face with a traditional
approach towards solving mobile application requirements.
Customization and development
Customizing the huge number of Windows applications that run your business for a mobile world
would be challenging enough if you only had to do it for one platform—but as bring-your-own
device (BYOD) becomes the norm, you need to ensure full compatibility with a proliferating variety
of device types and mobile operating systems. To enable full productivity, you need to give people
a native mobile-like experience with Windows applications, including touch-screen inputs and an
interface optimized for smaller displays. You also need to ensure that the custom applications you
develop in the future will be fully mobile, accessible and optimized for any-device productivity.
App delivery and access
Mobility is supposed to enable seamless, convenient access across devices and locations—not
confuse people with multiple methods for accessing the latest apps depending on the type of
application or device they’re using. IT needs a single, unified method for making the full range
of applications available on any device people choose.
User experience
Windows applications were designed to run best in a traditional enterprise environment—not on
mobile devices where packets may have to travel over mobile networks and connections of varying
quality to reach the datacenter. Poor Windows application performance on mobile devices caused
by inefficient data flows across your network and then the mobile carrier’s network can quickly
disillusion users about the effectiveness of your mobility strategy.
