SMEs offered mobile bundle
Citrix and Vodafone business information package will be sold through resellers
Citrix and Vodafone have teamed up to offer secure mobile access to business information and applications in a package sold exclusively through the channel.
The £49.50 per user, per month bundle includes Citrix MetaFrame Access Suite 3.0 licensing and initial configuration. Also included are 50MB of downloads a month (until October, when the limit drops to 25MB) through Vodafone's 3G or GPRS data networking cards, plus installation and support.
There is an additional £100 connection charge for each user.
In comparison, Vodafone's Medium data tariff is £23.50 a month for the same amount of data download, plus £150 for the data card.
Resellers will be able to offer extras such as hardware, end-user training and support to the target market of SMEs.
Kevin Bland, UK channel manager at Citrix, said the deal represents a great opportunity for its 350-strong reseller base and other voice and data operators with the necessary delivery skills.
"It gives them a proven platform for selling. Resellers can ask if customers want additional security devices, access devices, hosted data and applications, and everything else," he said.
Chris Netto, marketing communications manager at Citrix partner Point to Point, said: "This deal offers mobile access in a quick and easy fashion."
Netto said the demand for email and the availability of other applications on such devices would drive adoption of the Citrix/Vodafone package.
David Friedlander, desktop and mobile industry analyst at Forrester, thought the deal would be a good opportunity for resellers, but urged them to warn customers of the initial costs of buying devices and extra hardware up front.
"This could be attractive to SMEs as a turnkey solution," said Friedlander.
"But it would be more appealing to smaller shops if they had the option of offering it partly hosted on a server that isn't on the customer's site."