Unifying Digital Workspaces in Hybrid Multi-Clouds

This article is an excerpt from GovLoop’s recent guide, “Solving the Cloud Conundrum: Security, Procurement, Workforce.” Download the full guide here.

Digital natives are people who grew up using digital technologies such as social media and smartphones. They’re high on government’s hiring list because they’re tech savvy and frequently understand tools that agencies want to adopt. But part of the challenge that agencies face when recruiting and retaining these individuals is providing work environments that meet their needs.

For example, digital natives are used to working from anywhere on any device, but agencies often can’t accommodate this work style because their IT systems often don’t support it. To meet employees’ growing expectations for workplace flexibility, agencies are turning to Digital Workspaces.

Digital Workspaces combine cloud computing and legacy IT across multiple clouds to keep using traditional technology while adding cloud’s flexibility. The unintended consequence, however, is that too many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps applications are spread across multiple clouds. SaaS tools are software centrally hosted on cloud using a subscription basis. Although SaaS applications offer more access options for workers, they can also introduce more complexity and security challenges to agencies. Unified digital workspaces solve this dilemma by managing all apps, data, devices, desktops and users across hybrid multi-clouds in one place. It’s a single, secure platform that simplifies work for employees.

To understand how Citrix can help streamline hybrid multi-clouds for agencies, GovLoop spoke with Jose Padin, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), U.S. Public Sector at Citrix. Citrix is a digital networking and cloud solutions provider that can help agencies build unified digital workspaces across as many clouds as needed. “A digital workspace can help aggregate and combine your data into one place,” Padin said.

Hybrid multi-clouds are a natural evolution of using cloud infrastructure. Most agencies will leverage hybrid multi-clouds to achieve their mission goals. It’s important to understand as clouds develop new and different technology that standardization on one cloud is less likely. Subsequently, it’s important to architect and leverage tools that give the agency visibility, security and control across multiple clouds. Unified digital workspaces overcome the sprawl from growing hybrid multi-clouds by managing the various mobile, web and SaaS apps that agencies have. For example, users may have four separate logins to use four separate apps.

Unified digital workspaces provide users with one secure login for all four apps as needed. “Citrix can support any cloud,” Padin said. “And with Citrix’s workspace, we allow agencies to store your data where you’d like to. Unified digital workspaces increase productivity by making it easy for users to get done what they need to do.”