Bringing partners back into the fold

CRN spoke to Al Monserrat, vice president, Worldwide Channels and Emerging Product Sales for Citrix and Rob Willis, area vice president, Australia and New Zealand on the vendor’s product offerings, channel programs and outlook for 2008. The recent acquisition of server virtualisation company XenSource and a range of channel initiatives are predicted to boost the growth of Citrix’s virtualisation offerings in this region and internationally. Citrix is also optimistic that partners who may have become disillusioned in recent years will be enticed to return to the vendor.

CRN: What were the highlights for Citrix in 2007 in terms of expansion in the market?
Al Monserrat: Overall it was a great year for us, it’s funny how the market has been gradually moving in our direction or as I like to say, we wore them down. Citrix came into existence in 1989, and what we’ve being doing since then is virtualising, which means taking an application and providing it in a manner in which it is not installed where that person is. They can however interact with the application in the same way as they would on a PC.
We’ve been gradually moving into a more tactical solution … companies have realised there are significant cost savings, IT management savings and increased security of applications and data by running applications in a virtualised manner. So we’ve moved from something very tactical to more strategic. Attention has been placed on virtualisation itself and its different forms. As we entered 2007, there was a lot of attention on virtualisation markets, the most mature of which being application virtualisation, the other being server virtualisation and the third being desktop virtualisation – that has developed from server virtualisation and we’ll be seeing it develop further in 2008.
For us, in 2007 one of the key moves we made in desktop application virtualisation is we put different components from acquisitions and development to enter all three virtualisation spaces – application, server and desktop. What differentiates us at this point is that we have all the components and the fact that we’ve approached all three in a different manner. So 2007 was about crafting the vision and putting the pieces together while also focusing on our core business.

CRN: What is the focus of Citrix’s current channel strategy?
Al Monserrat: From a channel perspective, the one thing I think Citrix has done better than any other company is that it has been consistent over time. It’s a company that was born with the channel in mind and it was leveraged by nature – there was never an attempt to build a direct sales team – it was always around the channel and building products that the channel could sell and service. We are always looking for new ways to help the channel make money. That’s the biggest differentiator and the biggest success for Citrix is that partners know that Citrix will continue to be here.

CRN: What channel initiatives has Citrix launched recently?
Al Monserrat: We have several different committees and groups that are technology or more sales focused and from there we get feedback from partners on an ongoing basis. This is great for Citrix because we are constantly interacting with people from the channel. The one thing that we have always believed in is that the channel is our first customer, they’re the ones we have to talk to the most and understand their needs and build things around what they are trying to accomplish. We’ve evolved our product strategy and we’re working with our partners to do that. One thing that’s been at the top of our minds is doing things that allow partners to continue to develop relationships with their customers and to become more strategic.
A lot of it is gravitating toward web applications; thereby we have been directing investment in things such as Expertcity and also Netscaler, which directly target web application delivery, security and access. So from a channel strategy perspective, we’re giving them products that allow them to continue to be relevant and important in the eyes of customers. The second thing to consider is that partners can deliver the products in a profitable manner. We try to roll out services offerings that attach to our products and we’re putting big emphasis on technology assessments that partners can sell to customers that allow them to get that trusted advisor relationship with their customers, and allow them to make money selling that assessment. Validating either web architecture or a virtualisation project … that service offering attaches to our products or complementary products. That way they can continue to be a strategic partner to the customer.
We also always put additional financial incentives on the products and make those offerings more profitable. Last year we focused on our networking products and added a bonus to that program. So number one, we want to supply them with additional products to make them strategic in the market and number two, we want to provide them with the financial incentives to do so. And the third key component is doing everything we can to train them.
Deal registration is a program we launched four years ago and it was very unique at the time, although many have tried to copy it. Four years ago we had a lot of influencing partners that were out there educating people on Citrix, evangelising our products, but the partner who had done all the work educating the customer made no money. So we created this program where a partner that is working with a customer can register the deal on the website and if the customer decides to buy from a lower cost provider, the partner still gets anywhere from five and 15 percent of the suggested retail price of the deal, depending on the product and the size of the deal. The way we’re different from other vendors offering something similar is that we pay the partner whether they end up selling the deal or not. We also do an extra layer of verification to validate who the partner is that’s working with that customer and if they’re adding value to the product. Because of that integrity and process, partners really embrace the program.
Rob Willis: I think there are three things we’re very focused on locally. One is the virtualisation business, we’re very focused on enabling partners to work in the server virtualisation space. We’ve had a lot of partners working for a long time in application virtualisation, server virtualisation and desktop virtualisation. We’re also very focused on improving the way we manage our programs. Citrix has a number of other channel programs and we’re very focused on administering them in the best possible way so that partners can make the best use of it. And finally I think it’s about training and it’s about educating. We have a lot of new products and a lot of new technologies, not just with server virtualisation, but also WAN optimisation and web application acceleration … and it’s really telling partners about that and enabling them to do business.

CRN: Will there be a push by Citrix to engage channel partners further?
Rob Willis: We’ve been ramping up our channel programs over a period of time. Coming up in 2008 is our partner accelerator program. We will probably have 400-500 partners coming into Sydney and we’ll spend two days going through a whole overview of the new technologies from Citrix, it will be kind of like a big partner event for us where we do a lot of training and position the messages for 2008. We will also do a lot of technical training and sales training on the products.
And following on from that through the year we will hold a number of other events – webinars, one-on-one training, and other partner events. So there’s an ongoing stream of things that we do to educate and enable our partners. I think in the virtualisation space, one of the key things that sets us apart is the fact that a lot of what we do is at our own cost. This shows that we are really trying to enable more partners to be across server virtualisation and we think there’s a real opportunity for them to learn a lot about that space and be active in that space.
In 2008 we’re really focused on getting those people enabled and expanding
this market.

CRN: What sort of feedback are you receiving from partners in relation to Citrix channel programs?
Rob Willis: Virtualisation is so top of mind for our partners and it’s become so fast and so hot. So a lot of our partners are already working in virtualisation and they all recognise and are excited by the opportunities coming. So I would say that the reaction from our partners has been very positive. They’ve been open to new things, competition’s good for them, it’s good for customers, it moves technology along and so it’s been a very positive move by us. The partner programs we’ve set up around training have also been very well received.
In terms of the training we’re doing with the infrastructure we carry, a lot of our partners are familiar with server virtualisation concepts and they understand how it works. We’re really focusing on those who are not doing it. We’re taking the product and technologies to them.
Right now we’re in the process and final stages of acquiring our dedicated XenServer team. So there’s a dedicated group going out who are very focused on partners and building their expertise and building our business with them in the XenServer space. There’s a lot going on, we’re making a big investment locally and I think our channel partners recognise that.

CRN: Have there been or will there be organisational changes to support XenSource business within Citrix and how will this affect channel partners?
Al Monserrat: There are two specific populations that the acquisition of XenSource has really helped open doors for us, in terms of addressing a partner space that we weren’t in before. The first was around data centre storage and the other is Open Source.
Rob Willis: There are organsiational changes in the sense that we’re adding a team of people in Australia and New Zealand dedicated to XenSource and those people are focused on server virtualisation and the work we do in a data centre. We’re making a major investment in a new team of people just on server virtualisation. We see it as organisational growth, not organisational change.

CRN: Is Citrix looking to recruit more partners in this region?
Rob Willis: When you look at where Citrix has been in the last 12 months and the last 18 months there’s definitely room for more partners. The amount of server virtualisation that goes on is not as much as you’ve seen on the outside. I think everyone recognises that it’s still an early stage market and so there are definitely opportunities to do new things. Yes, there’s definitely room.
I’d be surprised if in a couple of years almost every partner is not in virtualisation in some way – whether server or desktop – I think they’ll all be involved. It’s not a temporary market force, it’s long-term.

CRN: What is Citrix’s channel focus for 2008?
Rob Willis: What would be good is when we’re getting underway at the beginning of the year it might be worthwhile getting partners to come out and have a look at some of the technology, to give them a sense of what it is. We deal with it 24/7 so it has a different meaning to us. We have a strong ability to demonstrate some of the virtual applications, virtual desktops and virtual server technology. We need to get them to come out some time and we’ll run them through it so we can give them a background in it and they can get a better sense of what we do and how we do it.
Al Monserrat: From a channel perspective, it’s the same situation around the world, the great news is in the fact that we’ve been around for so long. There are a lot of kids who were part of the Citrix family who over the course of time got used to the fact that we were there and are no longer up-to-date in terms of all we have. As a partner, for us it would be great if they could come back and see all we have to offer. We’ve grown the product portfolio from one to 16 products over the last four years. We’ve kept three primary things in mind. Number one is adding products that will make life easier for users, the second is making it very visible to IT managers and the third is cost – we aim to keep costs down. When you consider everything that we do and everything that we offer we are really the only company that can offer an end-to-end virtualisation solution – from data centre to desktop – so it would be great to get the word out and have partners relook at Citrix and update themselves on Citrix to really understand how they can deliver the products. There’s great market potential there. Desktop and server virtualisation alone is estimated to be about five billion in the next few years. There’s a great opportunity for partners to re-engage with Citrix right now.