Dicker Data has been granted expanded responsibilities for Citrix’s commercial business in Australia, as well as now looking after both the commercial and enterprise segments in New Zealand as well.
To support the evolution of the existing partnership, Dicker Data has launched CXANZ, a dedicated Citrix business unit representing the company in the ANZ region.
CXANZ is designed to strengthen partner alignment and deliver enhanced support across the Citrix portfolio.
Outside of the new responsibilities, Dicker Data will continue as the sole distributor for Citrix in the ANZ region and Citrix will continue to support enterprise customers directly in Australia.
Citrix ANZ VP James Sullivan told techpartner.news that market opportunity prompted the expansion of the partnership.
“We’re a global vendor, but we don't always tap into the local market conditions as well as we should, and without a doubt, Dicker Data has that expertise, flexibility and scalability," he said.
"We also have an extremely large partner ecosystem; with Dicker’s expertise, we’re able to nurture that ecosystem and give them the support around our solution sets, which ultimately enables better business to the end customer and better profitability for that partner ecosystem as well.”
While such a depth of integration and local management of a vendor is new for Dicker Data, Sullivan said that the move is reflective of the “standard model” for Citrix’s mid-market distribution deals in Europe and North America.
"Dicker's ability to take [on] corporate, own the channel and then own distribution is consistent with a global approach of how we're delivering [this programme],” he explained.
“Dicker Data is so entrenched in the community that their ability to talk to and nurture that market means we’re thrilled that we're able to execute in terms of a global, consistent programme, but actually do it with a local strategic partner who has local expertise and is really well known in the local community.”
Customised enablement programmes on the way for partners
On the Dicker Data side, the company’s GM of its software business unit, Pennie Stevens, said that the partnership means it’s now easier for the distributor to be able to talk to partners, understand what they need with managing their Citrix business and figuring out how to make that profitable and operationally efficient for them.
“To also have it so that we are managing all of the operations [too] just makes the cost of doing business and the efficiency so much better for the partner as well,” she said.
Chris Downes, Dicker Data’s senior business manager who holds the same role at the newly-established CXANZ, said the company is focused on building a simplified programme, offering as much flexibility and customisation to partners as possible.
“Because we are local and know the partners, we can act really quickly to put in options and opportunities for them, to leverage what Citrix are doing from a product development perspective and the market opportunities that are out there,” he told techpartner.news.
“It’s also about putting in customised enablement programmes with partners in areas they want to grow - not only existing Citrix partners that have built up Citrix practices over a number of years, but also looking to our expanded partner ecosystem and leveraging alliances that we've got with the likes of Microsoft and Nutanix, who work in very close step with Citrix.”
To go along with this, Dicker Data has also announced a multi-million-dollar investment into new headcount across both the Citrix team at Dicker Data and the CXANZ business unit.
"We've took on a number of Citrix expertise across sales, pre sales, product management and technical [roles], so we've already expanded the size of the team, and we'll continue to look to expand that as we look to grow the market and grow support for partners,” Downes said.
“We’ve also invested in operations, more systems and ways that we're going to market with our marketing for the partners,” Stevens added.
“Untapped market potential”
Sullivan said that while in the corporate side of the market, the use of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is enhancing certain use cases, for partners, multi vendor approaches are adding operational costs and overhead.
"Multi cloud, observability and application optimisation are all areas where our solution stack is compressing the complexity and driving an ecosystem of a more fluid solution; that drives cost out of the business as well,” he said.
“If we can give our partners tools to deliver these solutions to the end customer, it enhances their profitability and business model.”
Looking ahead, Stevens said building the CXANZ brand so it's well known in the market is a “really important thing” for Dicker Data.
“With the investments that we've made with the resourcing coming over, we really do want to see the whole thing grow very well,” she said.
“We’ve already seen success in the sense of the partners embracing it, so there’s been really good feedback and the touch points have already increased.”
Sullivan said Citrix expects the partnership to deliver "untapped market potential”.
“We expect us to get stronger in a segment that we're already very strong in, which is corporate and mid market, and we absolutely expect the adoption of the newer components of our portfolio and platform to increase at an exponential rate through this strategic partnership,” he said.
“We do anticipate the market to react quite positively, both at a channel level and an end user level too.”
