What did I learn from Citrix Unite?

March 11, 2024

Com-X Sales and Marketing Director, Nick Cross, attended the invite only Partner event in Orlando this month and shares his views in this article.

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I was delighted to be invited and represent Com-X at the Citrix Unite conference in Orlando last week. There has been a lot of change and questions in the EUC market in recent years in relation to the direction of Citrix and NetScaler? What’s going to happen with VMWare EUC division now they’re also under Private Equity ownership? Should customers and Partners start considering alternatives?

With change comes fear, uncertainty, and doubt and therefore emotions that need to be patiently tempered until the changes are explained and then organisations can make informed decisions based on the knowledge you gain, it sounds reasonable. Having been in a Senior APAC leadership role at Citrix until early 2023, I knew of some of the expected changes for last year and some of the leadership members who will be making the decisions.

I left Orlando with confidence that the simplicity of the recently announced Vision and Strategy for 2024 and beyond is supported in the investments that have been made in the technologies under the Citrix/NetScaler business units of Cloud Software Group (CSG). Investment in the product road map, level of technical support to drive down resolution times and validation that the company is ambitious in maximising the success for customers in their use of their technologies; through a simplified and clear product offering. Driven by tangible value in the business outcomes each package provides this means they can meet the customer where they are in their journey based on 3 key themes:

Capability – solving additional business challenges and more use cases to maximise the value from an investment in Citrix/NetScaler technology stack

Capacity – for customers to grow and scale their operations with their existing investments

Consolidation – Reduction in TCO, Complexity and Risk in application delivery and networking

Citrix has always been a value-based player for organisations and for those customer’s who have had a Citrix technology solution deployed for years may have often forgotten the reason they deployed the technologies in the first place. With the problems removed from their organisation IT and Business Executives often move onto the next projects and perhaps don’t always revisit their technology investments and comprehend the real opportunity they have entitlement to and therefore can easily miss the opportunity to capitalise on the value within their grasp as the fear, uncertainty and doubt of change, or the noisy squeaky wheel of other technologies grabs their attention.

As a technologist and EUC advocate, I think the Cloud Software Group leadership are making the right changes in their simplification of a technology package approach, that is full of genuine opportunity of increasing value for existing and net new customers to the Citrix/NetScaler technology offering. Rather than explain the CSG approach to technology packages, an insightful blog from Sridhar Mullapudi, (GM of Citrix business Unit) provides a welcome to the Citrix platform blog here.

Suffice to say CSG aren’t resting on their laurels and although the acquisition of vast limits GMBH to bring uberAgent into the Citrix family was announced during Citrix Unite, there should be no surprise if further acquisition announcements are made in the future, to expand the value based offerings and unique power within the technology packages offered.

It was pleasing to see Microsoft having a very visible presence at the entrance to the convention centre with loud support and espousing the power of Citrix on top of their AVD platform. I saw this very much as a recognition of the baseline offering that Microsoft brings and the Enterprise features and tools required to make their offerings really sing from their ecosystem of Vendors.

With the recent AWS tech preview announcement of Citrix DaaS on WorkSpaces Core it demonstrates that the two goliath Cloud providers have valuable options to offer that the Enterprise customers, (they both look to covet), can realise real value with Citrix technologies fronting their workloads on-premises, in the cloud or hybrid.

For an independent positioning of finding the value in your Citrix investment, a well written and unbiased blog was posted by James Kindon on his own website. It is well worth a read if the squeaky wheel I mentioned earlier has you only looking at a Microsoft or AWS DaaS offering without considering the value you might have at your finger tips or should be exploring. Where these Cloud Providers both offer a platform to build a DaaS service, understanding the art of the possible from Citrix (and others) in providing the Enterprise features that enhance end user experience, security, operational management, infrastructure costs, observability etc. of these DaaS offerings, is a worthy investment in time to read James’ blog.

If you’re an existing Citrix customer and looking for guidance from an invested Partner or if you’re looking for advise on a DaaS option, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with Com-X where we specialise in DaaS, Zero Trust and Secure Digital Workspaces.

Nick Cross (Com-X) with Ethan Fitzsimons (Vice President, Head of Global Channels – CSG) and Sridhar Mullapudi (EVP and General Manager, Citrix – CSG)