Citrix expands DaaS capabilities with Numecent acquisition

Citrix has announced it has completed the acquisition of Numecent, a specialist in enterprise application delivery and container management.

The deal will expand the cloud software giant’s Desktop as a Service (DaaS) capabilities for cloud-based application delivery across Windows environments, with the aim of reducing the complexity and cost of traditional app packaging and image management.

Numecent’s technology – which includes its complementary Cloudpaging and Cloudpager products – extends application delivery across both physical and virtual Windows environments to help organizations simplify application management at enterprise scale.

With Cloudpaging, Citrix gains a patented solution that packages Windows applications into isolated application containers and streams them to Windows endpoints on demand, without traditional installation or changes to the base image.

Meanwhile, Cloudpager operates as a cloud management console for tasks such as assigning applications, pushing updates, rolling back releases, recalling licences, and metering usage across Windows endpoints.

Citrix said the additions will help alleviate challenges that enterprise IT teams face when managing Windows environments, including bloated desktop images, application conflicts, and ransomware incidents.

“Enterprise customers have told us for years that application management is one of the most painful parts of running a Windows environment," said Shawn Bass, senior vice president and general manager of Citrix DaaS. "Numecent has solved this in a genuinely elegant way.

“By bringing Cloudpaging and Cloudpager into Citrix, we can make this capability native to every DaaS and physical desktop deployment so IT teams get back the time they spend wrestling with images and app conflicts.”

Native enterprise application delivery

The acquisition follows the launch of an integration between Cloudpager and Citrix DaaS back in April, which enabled administrators to natively publish and manage Cloudpaging application containers through Citrix workflows.

By acquiring the company, Citrix said customers now gain a host of further benefits – including lower desktop management costs.

By separating applications from the desktop image, the technology aims to reduce the number and size of images IT teams need to maintain, while also shortening application update cycles.

Legacy and modern applications can also run alongside one another, helping to reduce application conflicts and troubleshooting. The software is designed to lower the need for application repackaging by allowing a single container to support compatibility across different operating system versions, as well as physical and virtual Windows environments.

From a resilience perspective, Citrix said IT teams can rebuild a clean environment and quickly restore applications from the cloud following ransomware attacks or site failures.

Additionally, teams can manage applications across virtual and physical Windows environments from a single console, while gaining improved visibility into software usage and licensing.

Containerization can also help DevOps automation by reducing manual steps around application packaging and deployment, Citrix added.

Continued integration and support

Looking ahead, Citrix said it plans to further integrate Cloudpaging and Cloudpager into its platform, while continuing support for physical Windows desktops and laptops outside Citrix DaaS environments. The company will also continue to support existing Numecent customers throughout the transition.

Commenting on the acquisition, Numecent CEO Arthur Hitomi said becoming a part of Citrix will accelerate its mission of strengthening application resilience across the enterprise.

"Our Cloudpaging technology was built for exactly the kind of complex, high-scale environments Citrix serves,” he said. “Together, we can bring app-centric resilience to enterprise desktops worldwide.”

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Follow ITPro on Google News and add us as a preferred source to keep tabs on all our latest news, analysis, views, and reviews.

You can also follow ITPro on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and BlueSky.