Understanding the Citrix acquisition of Zenprise

Earlier this month, Citrix announced the car dvr acquisition of Zenprise, a supplier of enterprise mobility management. Acquisition price has not been announced, but PingWest guessing, the final purchase price should be around $ 300 million to 400 million (specific grounds set out below). Zenprise was founded in 2003 by Waheed Qureshi (now company President and CTO), since April this year, CEO of the company for many years Jayaram Bhat replaced by Amit Pandey, who is from the famous storage company NetApp executives. Since its inception, vehicle dvr Zenprise total after 8 rounds of financing, financing amounted to $ 64 million.

Last year, Zenprise both sales and the number of customers doubled four times, with growth rates can be seen. News that Zenprise several months ago in the search for the next round of financing, Citrix to investors to start negotiations, but opened up a purchase price that Zenprise does not deny, the two sides reached an agreement. This is Citrix's fifth acquisition this year, the enterprise desktop virtualization for PC end operations today in a growing number of well-known company to move closer to the enterprise mobility business.

Purchase price

Although specific terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed, but we can do some guessing through existing data. Earlier this year, media coverage of Zenprise competitor MobileIron's valuation of US $ 600 million. AirWatch and two other competitor Good Technology myths from time out listing, according to today's IPO market, valuations should be at least 500 million or more. The three main companies than to Zenprise, Zenprise's existing customer base but taken into account, they should be not much larger than the Zenprise. 8 years of its existence, many investors Zenprise represents Zenprise is they are a very good investment, even conservative estimates twice times the return on cash, Zenprise also at least a value of more than 100 million dollars. With Zenprise this is not actively seeking to sell, frame price may be higher. So a rough estimate, 3.4 billion was a reasonable valuation.

Products

Major enterprise mobility framework for current Citrix products is CloudGateway. The internal development of the Citrix product in July of this year formally launched. CloudGateway the main services provided are:

Moving to a unified platform to secure the network, and provide data to any Windows application on the device. It gives employees a self-service enterprise app store, let the staff simply log on with a single login to access any enterprise applications and data.

Citrix MDXvehicle dvr technology provides mobile application management segments (Granular mobile application management), the main role is to move the enterprise individual applications and data on the device with the separation of enterprise applications and data, and provides a secure mobile browsers and VPN access for specific applications.

CloudGateway also integrate Citrix's other products, including Citrix ShareFile (the product provides access to the same data on different devices). In addition to the company's existing mobile applications, it also provides a mobile application SDK, allows developers to write host applications on the Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop and Citrix Receiver is delivered to any mobile device.

Take a look at Zenprise, whose main product is Zenprise MobileManager. Zenprise provides business: mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM), a mobile side DLP/content management and mobile security. One of the most important business is the mobile application management and security. Zenprise in these two areas of business are:

Mobile application management

Mobile application performance: dynamic data flow compression application, arrangement of data when the network connection is lost (queue) and restore the transfer after the connection is restored, no need to make any code changes to any application.

Information for mobile applications: monitor and report on health of mobile applications.

Mobile application security: provides a login to access any enterprise application, network to encrypt data in motion, idle local encryption of data and the application software of the DLP policy.

Mobile Security

Compliance (compliance check): ensure that the device complies with the policies and policy implementation.

Mobile application security: provides a blacklist, limit applications and device resources, lock or delete applications only provide individual access to the applications developed by.

Mobile Security Intelligence: monitoring mobile device and mobile device security.

Motivation

In today's complex enterprise mobility environment, enterprises need to be able to manage devices, data, and applications. Although Citrix CloudGateway through the integration of ShareFile provides data management and application management, but this piece of equipment management services is still missing. Zenprise acquisitions filled the blank in the Citrix device management this one. Enterprise mobility market situation is, although its development is very fast, but customers are still afraid of being wrong service provider stranded. Now provides a complete enterprise mobility management platform, Citrix was telling customers to practical action, if the market demands change, Citrix platforms can be adjusted accordingly.

Integration

From a technical point of view, this acquisition is complementary, but Zenprise is and Citrix for relatively independent the framework, Citrix will continue it as a stand-alone product to sell (like CloudGateway), while slowly consolidating Zenprise to Citrix itself more powerful on a comprehensive set of enterprise mobility platform. Citrix recognizes that it must in this highly competitive market will car dvr remain an independent software to distribute Zenprise, rather than requiring all customer transfer to CloudGateway. Especially when it comes to customer needs only device management, other features on CloudGateway Zenprise to potential customers would be completely meaningless.

Competition

From a competition point of view, this initiative will undoubtedly contribute to Citrix in the broader mobile enterprise market as a strong competitor. In normal circumstances, enterprise mobility tend to create a lot of complexity for IT, so if there are any vendor can reduce IT complexity associated with mobility, while also allowing enterprises to take full advantage of the existing IT architecture, is to become the preferred. Currently on the market by a single, unified platform at the same time providing the equipment, data and application management vendors are almost does not exist. Citrix Zenprise through acquisitions while also not integrated into a unified platform, but in providing a full range of services already has taken a major step forward in this regard, and is far ahead of competitors.

Challenge

While many Citrix customers will be very happy to see Citrix Zenprise through acquisitions to strengthen its capacity in mobile device management, but the real question is: next is the center of gravity in the traditional business is on the move? Citrix is rapid innovation and the establishment of the leading position in the mobile market also because consolidation of Zenprise speed is too slow and lose the opportunity to enter the mobile device management?

See years Qian living of examples (just this examples in data management industry, and car dvrnot equipment management), McAfee and Sophos these traditional of security software company is early realized that has moved data management (MDM) of importance, and is early began has this area of research, but due to company of gravity also is placed in has traditional business Shang, moved data management end of business eventually is emerging of specialized do moved business of company defeated, such as MobileIron and AirWatch. McAfee and Sophos does not know if Citrix will go following their footsteps.