Tech Brief: Citrix Endpoint Management

About Citrix Endpoint Management

Citrix Endpoint Management is an industry acknowledged Unified Endpoint Management aka UEM solution offered through the Citrix Cloud as a Service. Unified Endpoint Management solutions offer a single uniform over-the-air management interface for mobile, laptops, PCs, and other devices like wearables and IoT endpoints. Citrix Endpoint Management provides a flexible choice in platform management, ownership models (Bring Your Own Device, Choose Your Own Device, Company Owned - Personally Enabled and Company Owned – Business Only) and delivery models for securing the endpoint, applications, the connections, and data.

By that enabling users productivity for current and future business use cases (Frontline Worker, Single-Purpose, Office Worker, Signage/Kiosk). Unified Endpoint Management is one of the fundamental pillars in the Zero Trust Framework and Future Ready Secure Workspaces initiatives to providing insights to the device compliance and health posture, applications, and connections used. This information is fed into analytics systems so that Risk profiles can be created and Continues Adaptive Risk and Assessments can take place. Unified Endpoint Management embeds cross-platform security into organizations onboarding processes of users, endpoints and applications helping to streamline modern workspace strategies and cloud security.

The Evolution of Device Management

Enterprises initially turned to Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions to manage their devices. MDM not only centralized device management, but it also gave I.T the ability to perform remote configurations and updates, and efficiently deliver applications and data to mobile endpoints. MDM helped I.T. organizations overcome early bring-your-own-device (BYOD) challenges, such as onboarding and large-scale management.

Mobile Application Management (MAM) emerged soon after MDM and focused on securing and managing applications as individual components. MAM offers a similar set of policies and user experience management as MDM, but at a different application level rather than the device level. Since then, MAM has expanded to encompass app-level control of secured (Micro) VPN, inter-container communication, and secure containers.

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) has recently emerged as the market standard for securing and controlling any corporate or personal devices, including any other devices like IoT and wearables. Unified Endpoint Management provides the ability to centrally and over the air, to discover, provision, manage, deploy, update and, maintain all in a cohesive manner from a single console. Citrix Endpoint Management Service (CEM) is the Unified Endpoint Management technology from Citrix that transforms the workspace experience to support every endpoint and brings unification in IT administration.

Unified Endpoint Management Elements

What are the main elements for a Unified Endpoint Management solution and what do they do? Initial Unified Endpoint Management consists of the following fundamental components;

• Endpoint Management
• Application Management
• Content Management
• Identity and Access Management
• Security Management
• Connectivity Management

Additional Monitoring, Business Insights, Remote Control, and Support are elements of the current UEM offerings. Unified Endpoint Management is not limited to these elements as the market is constantly evolving and expanding.

Endpoint Management Architecture Frameworks

The Architecture Frameworks section contains the graphical representations of architecture concepts including conceptual point of views, principles, components, data flows, communication ports, and other architecture representations that are part of the Citrix Endpoint Management solution offered by Citrix.

Endpoint Management Service Architecture

The Citrix Endpoint Management service architecture diagram identifies the system components and the interconnections between components. Other key communication paths are described.

Conceptual Service Ownership and Management Architecture

The Citrix Endpoint Management ownership and management architecture diagram identifies and highlights the system components, service components, locations, and the management responsibilities between Citrix and the IT management team.

Citrix Endpoint Management Service

Citrix XenMobile Server Current Release (on-premises)

Citrix XenMobile Server Current Release is the initial Citrix on-premises Unified Endpoint Management solution. Citrix advices for new customers to start their Unified Endpoint Management journey directly using the Citrix Endpoint Management Service. A cloud first designed Unified Endpoint Management Service. If you’re using XenMobile Server on-premises, our free XenMobile Migration Service can get you started with Citrix Endpoint Management Service. Migration from XenMobile Server to Citrix Endpoint Management doesn’t require you to re-enroll devices. More information on the XenMobile Migration Service

Unified Endpoint Management Ownership Models

Business Ownership Models

Starting with Unified Endpoint Management means that you need to have information on business ownership models and management options. Most important are the business ownership models and the technical related management options of these ownership models. A Business Ownership Model describes in basics who owns the device and what and who manages the device partially or fully from an IT management perspective. A business ownership model can also be used to correlate into security needs, responsibility, and liability of the data and apps used on a device. All the different business needs, personal, or business usage of apps and data have resulted into the following most common business ownership models used.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) means that employees can use their own smartphones, laptop, and tablets for their work. With BYOD there can be some Legal Complications in the event of a loss, virus, or data breach, the use of your own device also causes legal complications. For example, who is responsible where appropriate? And is the company allowed to maintain its ICT policy in full on private devices?

Choose Your Own Device (CYOD)

Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) means that employees can choose a device from a pre-approved list of devices types and models by the employer. With this approach, not only the IT department is satisfied, as it makes managing the devices very easy. The employee will also be satisfied with it, because there is still a certain freedom of choice on the devices they need for their work.

Company Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE)

Company Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE) is one of the two policies that an organization can implement for a Choose-Your-Own-Device policy. The employee may choose from a list of devices selected in advance by the organization. The device is purchased and managed by the organization but may also be used by the employee for private purposes.

Company Owned, Business Only (COBO)

Company Owned, Business Only (COBO) is the business model where companies supply the employee with a device purchased and managed by the company to use and restrict this hardware for business use only, private use is prohibited. Employees often weren’t given a choice for what device they would have.

To get started with Citrix Endpoint Management Service you must sign up or already have a Citrix Cloud account. You can sign up for a Citrix Cloud account by following the instructions here: Sign up for Citrix Cloud.

Once, you have access to Citrix Cloud you can request access to a Citrix Endpoint Management trial by following the instructions here: Request a Citrix Endpoint Management Demo