Citrix Systems has acquired Framehawk for an undisclosed sum, and will use the company's technology to improve the performance of virtual desktops and applications over wireless networks.
With the increased adoption of tablets and smartphones in enterprises, performance becomes an issue over Wi-Fi and cellular networks where access may be intermittent or poor due to congestion, high packet loss and or high latency, according to Citrix.
To mitigate such problems, Framehawk's technology will be combined with Citrix HDX in the XenApp and XenDesktop products. Citrix didn't provide any details on when that work will be finished.
Framehawk's LFP (Lightweight Framebuffer Protocol) was inspired by experiences company engineers had when working in spacecraft communications at NASA, according to Framehawk. The goal was to enable communication over 24,000 kilometers on mobile networks without the help of a customized chipset on each device, it said.
Framehawk was founded in 2008 and is based in San Francisco. The company will now become part of Citrix's Enterprise and Service Provider division.
The last couple of months have seen vendors step up their efforts to boost the use of virtual desktops and desktop-as-a service offerings, which are based on the same technology. In October VMware acquired desktop-as-a service company Desktone and in November Amazon Web Services announced WorkSpaces, a desktop-as-a service offering based on Teradici's PCoIP technology, which competes with HDX.
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