Citrix Makes the Case for Battery-Friendly MDM with XenMobile 9

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Mobile device management (MDM) apps don’t have to be power-hungry, according to Citrix.

The company has released XenMobile 9.0, the latest edition of its MDM platform for iOS and Android devices. This time around, Citrix was on a mission to stretching battery life.

In a blog post, Kevin Binder, a senior product marketing manager for XenMobile at Citrix, said that using XenMobile’s “new Background App Refresh capabilities, provides up to 83% improvement in battery usage.” A six-hour test, which involved sending 200 emails during that period, produced some encouraging results.

XenMobile 9 on Apple’s iPhone 4S showed the biggest improvement. After the test, the 4S saw a battery drain of 1 percent compared to 6 percent with XenMobile 8.7. An LG Android handset saw a modest improvement of a 6 percent drain compared to 7 percent with version 8.7.

Users will notice UI tweaks and other new additions that help them complete tasks faster. The update software includes “redesigned interfaces, new productivity apps and integrated features that allow your mobile workforce to create streamlined workflows and accomplish mobile tasks with fewer steps,” stated Binder.

New capabilities include offline page viewing, customizable inboxes and server-side search. On the security front, Citrix XenMobile is now FIPs-compliant on iOS and Android. It also supports third party penetration testing and validation services from Gotham and Veracode.

Also new is support for Apple’s bulk device enrollment technology. In addition, the platform now supports Windows 8.1 devices and Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones.

XenMobile 9 includes new productivity apps, bring the total to six. Joining WorxMail, WorxWeb and ShareFile are WorxNotes, WorxEdit and WorxDesktop. “By name these are six different applications but through deep feature integration they work more like a system,” said Binder.

“The new workflow-driven mobile apps in XenMobile provide seamless integration between commonly used enterprise apps,” said Rajiv Taori, vice president of Product Management for Citrix’s Mobile Platforms Group, in a statement. “We have also made significant enhancements to XenMobile cloud, allowing us to deliver these innovations equally in the cloud or on-premises.”

WorxEdit, which can be used to edit Microsoft Office documents, is available now. The WorxNotes note taking app and WorxDesktop remote desktop viewer are available as tech previews and will officially ship later this quarter.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.