Citrix announced today that it is acquiring Zenprise for an undisclosed sum. Citrix seems like an unlikely suitor for Zenprise, however this acquisition also allows Citrix to integrate and deliver their entire application stack to mobile, including their existing mobile applications (including GoToMeeting, Podio and ShareFile), enterprise desktop/application remote access and virtualization technologies (Citrix Receiver), and collaboration tools (GoToMeeting and GoToAssist). Additionally, this could allow Citrix to further extend their virtualization technologies to mobile to compete with VMWare’s mobile virtualization initiatives.

Zenprise’s software will be integrated into Citrix’s Me@Work and CloudGateway product lines. Me@Work provides mobile apps for business collaboration. CloudGateway is a management console for user managing access to mobile device software and data.

While Citrix is not a traditional MDM vendor, the market is due for consolidation with 40+ vendors currently playing this space and a value exceeding $7 billion. We expect to see significantly more acquisitions in the MDM market, with enterprise vendors potentially picking up more than one of the smaller vendors based on features.