Building the C-Suite Mobile Workspace

Chances are, your enterprise has embraced mobility — nearly everyone has one or more mobile devices, whether smart phone, laptop or tablet. It’s your job to ensure the mobile users are getting a good experience – and chances are they are. And yet, some people should be getting a better, special experience. Those people are the executives who occupy the C-suite.

C-suite folks are the most mobile of employees and likely have worldwide travel on their itineraries. They have the most critical data on their mobile devices and can least afford downtime. And let’s face it, prestige matters. An executive taking a major client out to dinner is not going to impress anyone when taking a call on a last-generation device with last-generation capabilities.

Even beyond those needs, however, is the importance of building trust and credibility with the C-suite. As this CIO.com article explains,  savvy IT execs should endeavor to build bridges with C-level peers. Call it politics if you want, but this means understanding their needs and making sure those needs are met – or better – exceeded. Taking all these factors into account, you should tailor a great C-suite mobile experience for each exec. Citrix Mobile Workspace gives you the tools to do that.  For example:

Travel – When C-suite types are on the road, they require a seamless mobile experience that is highly functional, highly secure, and the same practically everywhere. For this you need an always-on mobile workspace, delivered to any device. Citrix XenMobile Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Management (MAM) capabilities are essential for this. They give you a very broad range of configuration options, from a lightweight level of access and security, to a high level of access and extreme lockdown.  

Collaboration – Email and text messages are not enough. Executives need to be able to share large files with no hassle. Citrix ShareFile enables users to access, sync and securely share files from any device. ShareFile also lets you choose where data is stored, whether on premises, in the cloud or a combination of both, to meet sovereignty, compliance, performance and cost requirements. And Citrix has gone above and beyond by developing ShareFile Storage Zone Connectors so users can securely access documents that are not stored in ShareFile.

Security – Any data breach is bad, but when a C-level exec loses data it may be critical intellectual property. The loss not only generates bad publicity, but also raises regulatory compliance alarms. In short, execs must get the highest-level security possible.  A good starting point is to keep data off the device whenever possible and, when data is stored on the device, to encrypt it. Citrix Mobile Workspace is engineered to do just that. It also includes capabilities like MicroVPN, which delivers the security benefits of VPN (virtual private network) technology at the application level.

Here’s something else to consider: The senior executive mobility experience can serve as a lab for the rest of the company. When something is tried and found to work well, it can be offered as needed to a broader range of employees.

Citrix Mobile Workspace offers an extremely broad range of options so you can craft very different mobile experiences for very different groups of users – down to the individual level. Remember, when C-level execs receive a great mobile experience, they won’t forget who provided it.