Tag: citrix

Vendor job kill continues

Posted on January 23, 2023 by - News

Never mind any skills gap, Vendors are firing staff who they may never see again to make a short-term cut in costs.

Google handed six per cent of its global workforce pink slips apparently to refocus on its priorities, including AI.

CEO Sundar Pichai said: “We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”

Pichai said the company will be reviewing its current operations in order to make the most of its early investments in AI.

Axe falls at CSG

Posted on January 13, 2023 by - News

Cloud Software Group, which owns Citrix, and enterprise applications vendor Tibco have begun widespread layoffs.

Thousands of staff have been told to clear out their desks and collect their pink slips, with some layoffs dubbing the firings as “brutal.”

Sources said that the layoffs include much of Citrix’s commercial sales organisation and some channel-facing employees. Another person familiar with the layoffs said that sales, channel sales engineers and education sales roles were also cut.

There has been nothing official from the company about the staff cuts but word on the street is that CSG wants to focus directly on its top 1,000 enterprise accounts, leaving mid-tier and commercial accounts to be supported and serviced by solution providers.

Citrix to be merged with Tibco

Posted on February 1, 2022 by - News

Citrix  Systems is being acquired and taken private in an all-cash deal valued at $16.5 billion and will be combined with data integration and analysis software developer Tibco.

Citrix is being bought by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital, the latter an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management. Tibco has been owned by Vista Equity Partners since 2014.

The deal has been unanimously approved by the Citrix board of directors and is expected to close by mid-year, subject to customary closing conditions, Citrix shareholder approval and regulatory approvals. Elliott Management and its affiliates, which own about 12 per cent of Citrix shares, will vote their shares in favour of the deal.

The Citrix-Tibco merger “will create one of the world’s largest software providers, serving 400,000 customers, including 98 per cent of the Fortune 500 with 100 million users in 100 countries”, the companies said in a statement.

Citrix appoints Valette Northern Europe Veep

Posted on September 9, 2021 by - Moving People, News

Citrix has appointed Carole Valette as its new area vice president for Northern Europe, who will be responsible for sales and services operations in the UK, Ireland and the Nordics.

She will report to Sherif Seddik, senior vice president and managing director for Citrix EMEA, and will work closely with the internal team and the partner ecosystem at Citrix to drive cloud adoption, as well as growth and development of the Citrix sales and services organisation within the region.

She said that she was looking forward to her new role and working together with the local teams, customers and partners across Northern Europe to grow our joint business and strengthen the Citrix leadership position in the market.

Resellers flooded with optimism

Posted on March 1, 2018 by - News

3016188605_b86c94f3f2_bResellers are seeing their glasses half full and are expecting a year of growth according to a new Citrix report into the doings of Northern Europe suppliers.

According to Canalys CEO  Steve Brazier, things started to improve last October, and Citrix and Canalys decided to find more evidence that things were getting better.

Apparently, 59 percent of those respondents Canalys asked were expecting double-digit growth this year.

That growth was going to come from a selection of areas including security, cloud applications and infrastructure as a service. Slightly over a third of those quizzed in the survey revealed they had taken on extra staff to support the sale of subscription-based services.

Three quarters said that managed services would be ‘critical’ to their revenue this year with most recognising that the way to do it is by working with a public cloud provider or third-party data centre, rather than trying to do that themselves.

Citrix Northern Europe partner director Justin Sutton-Parker said businesses were embracing significant change to remain competitive. There were new, disruptive players entering markets, armed with best-of-breed cloud software and the incoming GDPR legislation, some factors are forcing significant numbers of organisations to evaluate their IT infrastructure and business models.

“These industry changes appear to be encouraging increased dependence on the channel, with end-user customers relying on partners’ knowledge and expertise – especially about cloud deployments. Alongside this, new technologies – such as analytics and artificial intelligence – are also set to play a more significant role for channel partners this year, as organisations seek to improve operational efficiencies and take their end-user customer experience to the next level,” he said.

Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Canalys, picked up on that complexity theme and said that customers were looking for support from resellers.

“As end-users adopt these complex technologies, the need for a highly-skilled, consultancy-led channel becomes even more critical. The challenge facing the channel is a shortage of critical skills, both from a technology and a business advisory point of view. Vendors that succeed will be those that enable their partners with the resources and support to capitalise on these massive emerging opportunities”, he said.

AWS, VMware, Microsoft and Symantec are pants vendors

Posted on February 27, 2018 by - News

hqdefaultAWS, APC, Citrix, Huawei, McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec, Veritas and VMware are lowest-scoring vendors in a channel management survey according to research outfit Canalys.

The Canalys Leadership Matrix was based on more than 2,700 responses from EMEA channel partners who were asked to rate their vendor partners across ten areas of channel management.

Canalys divided the results into four: “Champions”, “Growers”, “Contenders” and “Stragglers”, the survey also judges vendors on how their standing in the Leadership Matrix has changed.

Nine companies were placed in Canalys’ “Stragglers” quadrant, reserved for vendors that “have shown significant weakness in areas of channel management” or “have seen a deterioration in partner relationships, either by choice or mistake”.

AWS, APC, Citrix, Huawei, McAfee, Microsoft, Symantec, Veritas and VMware were all named as channel Stragglers in the survey.

Vole and VMware, two firms which have “highly successful businesses built on sales via partners,” were named and shamed in the report with Canalys saying that there was “a growing wave of channel dissatisfaction with both brands”.

Dell EMC’s appointment as an “official distributor” of VMware licences last year dealt a blow to its resellers and distributors and likely prompted a fall from grace among partners.

Canalys claimed that Microsoft, meanwhile, has been “accused of squeezing channel margins” through its Cloud Solution Provider partner programme.

The top-scoring vendors in the survey included Fujitsu, Cisco, Lenovo, Palo Alto Networks and Veeam. Canalys said that  Cisco’s quality of technical support for partners remains unparalleled when compared with its competitors, while Lenovo’s “Channel 2.0” initiative, which sought to simplify partner incentives, was well received by the channel.

Apple’s  overall rating was still relatively low compared with its peers, and its resellers still suffer from “low margin potential” and “rigid terms and conditions” from the vendor.

 

Citrix announces new partner plan

Posted on January 11, 2018 by - News

1_Citrix-SignCitrix has been showing off its new incentives programme, dubbed Citrix Ultimate Rewards, to its channel partners.

During the Citrix Summit in Anaheim, California, Paul Fecteau, managing director of partner programs and operations at Citrix, told the assorted throngs that the goal behind the new incentives program is to increase simplification in doing business with Citrix and to drive partner profit in the cloud market.

Currently, Citrix’s incentives programme has five different elements, which were all built at different times in Citrix’s channel evolution. Each programme element has its own rules, which makes it rather complicated for players to know the rules.

“We recognise that that is a challenge, especially for newer partners who aren’t familiar with Citrix. But even our existing partners have been challenged on occasion”, said Fecteau.

Starting 10 February, Citrix will offer two discount elements – Spark and Drive – and one quarterly rebate element – Accelerate. It doesn’t have an element called Challenge, as far as we can tell.

Spark serves as a replacement for Citrix’s Net New Partner Source program and will reward partners for identifying and registering opportunities Citrix doesn’t know about.

Drive is akin to the current Citrix Advisor Rewards programme and will pay into partners’ Accelerate rebate, plus offer partners a discount for delivering “value-selling activities”.

Fecteau noted that after the launch of the Citrix Ultimate Rewards programme, a new system will ask partners questions about its customer and deal and then automatically identify the incentives the partner can receive.

 

Citrix partners predict growth this year

Posted on March 6, 2017 by - News

1_Citrix-SignMost Citrix channel partners predict 2017 will see more revenue growth than last year.

According to Citrix, more than 88 percent of its polled partners across Northern Europe, including UK and Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden where optimistic about revenue growth.

More than 71 percent said they are undergoing some kind of transformation, and 45 per cent were revamping their processes to keep up with industry changes.

Justin Sutton-Parker, Citrix partner director for Northern Europe, said that the IT industry was facing one of the largest periods of change since its inception, with new and innovative technologies disrupting the bigger players and driving increased customer churn.

“Despite this challenge, channel partners are forecasting a year of significant growth, with the cloud earmarked as a driver of such change.”

A third of partners think they will see revenue increases of more than 20 percent year on year thanks to bigger opportunities, and a fifth predict margins will increase as a result of customer demand.

The Cloud will be the primary growth driver, according to 71 percent of respondents, who said it will account for at least 10 percent of revenues.

More than 38 percent of respondents said they think cloud will account for 20 per cent of new business in the coming year. However, cloud drove less than 10 per cent of revenues for 60 percent of partners last year.

Emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data and the IoT may be too immature to experience the same sort of growth as the cloud, the survey found.

Just over half said the IoT is important, but 37 percent don’t believe it will make a difference to their business, and 12 percent won’t be selling IoT gear.

“Partners may be divided when it comes to the potential of emerging technologies such as Big Data and the IoT, but the message is clear when it comes to the delivery of cloud services. The time for action is now, and only by working with the right vendors can partners truly capitalise on this opportunity,” Sutton-Parker said.

Cybersecurity will be one of the leading growth areas for the channel in 2017. Over 90 percent of partners said they fully expect customers to increase spending on cybersecurity in the next year. The motivation behind this is increased governance and regulation, they said.

Cloud no panacea as Citrix tries to sell itself

Posted on September 23, 2015 by - News, Products

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudIt would appear that tacking “cloud” onto your product list is not proving to be a panacea for IT company woes.

Citrix, a US cloud computing company, is making a final attempt to sell itself as a whole before it embarks on asset sales, according to people familiar with the matter.

Citrix, which had attracted the interest of private equity investors before it agreed in July to give a man called Elliott a seat on its board of directors, is having new conversations with buyout firms.

Apparently the outfit is looking to hardware makers like Dell who might want to create a product and cloud package.

Citrix announced in July it would explore strategic alternatives for its GoTo family of products, including videoconferencing and desktop sharing service GoToMeeting. However, a sale process for these assets has not started yet because Citrix wants to see if it can still sell itself at a satisfactory valuation, according to the sources.

If Citrix does not sell itself it will sell or spin off its GoTo products, and other methods to asset strip itself.

Citrix provides communications software and networking solutions for businesses. It reported net income of $251.7 million in 2014, down from $339.5 million in 2013.

Earlier this year, Elliott called on Citrix to sell some units, cut costs and buy back shares to make up for six years of underperformance. In addition to the GoTo business, Elliott has called for Citrix to explore the sale of NetScaler, which helps speed up Web-based applications.

Elliott clinched a deal with Citrix in July that gave Jesse Cohn, one of its senior partners, a seat on the company’s board. Citrix also said it would start a search for an independent board member, mutually agreeable to Citrix and Elliott.

It also said at the time that Chief Executive Mark Templeton was retiring and that it would search for a new CEO.

Earlier this month, Citrix said it would repurchase up to an additional $500 million of its common stock.

 

 

 

Citrix buys intelligent storage firm

Posted on January 12, 2015 by - News

Citrix HQPrivately owned Sanbolic has been bought by Citrix for an undisclosed amount.
Sanbolic is effectively a company specialising in storage management, whether that be using SSD, flash or hard drives in NAS, SAN, server side or cloud deployments.
The company offers load balancing, application availability and high performance management.
Citrix said it will build the capabilities of Sanbolic into its XenDesktop, XenApp and ZenMobile product suites.
Citrix said the acquisition means that its customers can use virtual apps and VDI across their businesses, guaranteeing workload service level agreements.
It said over 200 of its customers already use Sanbolic to allow availability and clustering of XenApp and XenDesktop.
Momchil Michailov, the CEO of Sanbolic, said that it has 13 years of experience with enterprise customers using server side and converged storage management.
Citrix senior VP Geir Ramleth said the complexities of infrastructure hinder VDI and application delivery deployments. The acquisition of Sanbolic will help Citrix manage the problem head on.  Employees of Sanbolic will now work for Citrix.

IBM bets on the mobile market

Posted on November 26, 2014 by - News

horseraceEnterprises wanting to leverage their legacy systems using devices like smartphones and tablets are being tempted by IBM to enter its garden of mobility delights.

The company said it has added a number of pieces to its Mobility Services jigsaw.

That includes “desktop as a service” (DaaS) intended to let companies implement desktop features on mobile devices using a subscription service offered using the IBM Cloud.

IBM, using research figures from Juniper, estimates that one billion smartphones and tablets owned by workers will be use in enterprises by 2018.

That gives IBM the chance to sell enterprises services that include integration, support, maintenance, security and compliance.

Big Blue claims that will give enterprises the ability to deliver applications to hosts of mobile devices in hours rather than months.

IBM is also offering what it describes as the “trifecta” of mobile, cloud and analytics services.  Trifecta usually means a type of bet on horse races – usually called a triple – which we’re not sure IBM wants to mean by this word.

The DaaS offering uses the Citrix Worspace Suite via cloud infrastructure from its subsidiary, Softlayer.  IBM explains that, for example, this would let a saleswoman or man to click an icon on a tablet and turn it into a personal work desktop with access to large sales presentations and the like.

Citrix intros tablet access app

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

shareconnectAn app that lets you connect Android tablets and Apple iPads to business applications and networks is being introduced by Citrix.

ShareConnect lets people access and edit files using native desktop applications on business networks.And it can use business applications that require resource intensive functions running on an enterprise network.

Desktop applications, said Citrix, are optimised for tablets and open in full screen mode.  And you can use tablet functions such as swiping, pinching and zoom and can edit Microsoft Word files and the like.

The company said that ShareConnect also comes with 1GB of cloud storage from its ShareFile service.

The software is available for freedownload in Apple’s App Store and in Google’s Play store.

Jesse Lipson, a VP at Citrix said: “Not all data is stored in the cloud and many desktop apps are not fully functional through mobile apps.  With ShareConnect, users can access and edit files, use industry specific desktop apps, and even use their business neworks.”

Organisation waves goodbye to the desktop PC

Posted on November 18, 2013 by - News

Scottish standardThe Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has moved to a mobile model and in the process reduced its PC energy costs by as much as 90 percent.

That’s according to Citrix, which said it is using its  technology to reduce its energy footprint.

SEPA is using desktop virtualisation technology to centralise data and applications, which people  can now use as a service. It moved into a new building earlier this year designed with mobile usage in mind – and includes seven hot desks for 10 staff. SEPA employees over 1,000 people.

Staff get to the SEPA desktop wherever they are and using whatever device is being used – whether it’s a tablet, a home PC or a desktop PC.

The scheme will also reduce business travel costs. Citrix gives as one example that lets scientists who work at the agency start a model in the morning from home and access the results later in the day.

Jav Yaqub, IT Services Manager, SEPA said: “We wanted this project to embody the core ethos of the agency, creating an efficient and environmentally-conscious IT infrastructure. We also wanted to offer people their desktop, wherever they went, but we were obviously concerned about potential data loss. The idea of having a centralised virtual desktop and using low power thin-client devices was very attractive. Our employees love the new environment.  They are able to do more things from more places.”

Citrix goes channel cert nuts

Posted on October 21, 2013 by - News

cloud 2Cloud company Citrix said it has revised its certification programmes, with less examinations and a simplified system.

It is offering three certifications to its channel, all relating to XenDesktop 7.

Those are Certified Associates, Certified Professionals, and Certified Experts.  These all relate to apps and desktops.

Citrix said it will add similar certifications for networking and mobility in the next few months.

Tom Flink, VP of worldwide channels at the company said: “We continue to evolve our channel program in an effort to make it easier for our partners to do business with Citrix, and help them identify and capitalise on new revenue streams. The new simplified structure and guidelines make it easier for our partners to achieve and stay up-to-date on the latest Citrix certifications. Through the new certifications we are also providing our partners with the comprehensive skills and expertise they need to sell end-to-end, holistic solutions that will differentiate them from competitors and allow them to generate more Citrix-related revenue.”

SMT becomes first ExtraHop certified partner in Benelux

Posted on October 14, 2013 by - News

ExtraHop-logoExtraHop has selected SMT as its first certified partner for the Benelux region. SMT is a specialist in IT management with offices in Belgium and the Netherlands, with more than 100 large clients. 

Several technical teams from SMT have completed extensive training and are no certified to offer consultancy, sales and implementation services across the region. SMT will also demonstrate the ExtraHop platform at the Splunk Live! Event in Amsterdam on Tuesday.

“ExtraHop provides a perfect fit within our portfolio. It’s the first platform that effectively mines wire data in real-time, delivering business-critical operational intelligence across increasingly dynamic IT environments,” Michiel Toes, co-founder and Sales and Marketing Director at SMT said. “Moreover, ExtraHop’s wire data analytics are a perfect complement to Splunk, supplementing machine log data to provide total visibility into application and service delivery.”

ExtraHop is currently the global leader in real time wire data analytics for operational IT intelligence. Its latest products and services include the Persistent Monitoring Architecture, the EH8000 appliance for real time L2-L2 application transaction analysis and a new agentless Citrix VDI monitoring solution.

“IT environments are becoming more complex as virtualisation, cloud, and mobility take hold, and traditional sources of visibility, including log and agent data, are no longer sufficient to deliver crucial intelligence on their own,” said Owen Cole, VP of EMEA Sales for ExtraHop. “Wire data is a key source of insight into the performance, availability, and security of IT applications and services.”