Winning Together in 2017

This morning, we kicked off Citrix Summit 2017, our annual sales enablement and business development conference, in Anaheim, California.

I had the pleasure of welcoming nearly 1,900 partners, including Citrix Solution Advisors, Citrix Service Providers, and SIs from more than 70 countries, as well as more than 2,100 employees to the Anaheim Convention Center, thanking them for a successful 2016 and outlining how we will win together in 2017.

2016 was, without a doubt, a great year and our success would not have been possible without our partners. I want to personally thank each and every one of them without whom this would not have been possible.

We landed more than 4,500 net new customers, including nearly 1,000 new cloud subscribers.

We expanded the Citrix footprint by receiving 1,814 trade-up orders and saw the number of customers with more than one Citrix product grow to 25 percent.

We partnered for success, seeing nearly 69,000 opportunities that were advised or fulfilled by partners and 98 percent of product revenue come through our partners. We also paid out $59.7 million in Citrix Advisor Rewards and Net New Partner Sourced incentives to our partners.

In 2017, we will continue to build on this momentum and success with our partners by winning together. Here is how we will do it:

We will win together with secure workspaces. In 2017, we are asking our partners to Walk in the Cloud. As we begin that journey, leading with Workspace Suite will be critical, as we build our leadership in WaaS. Leading with Workspace Suite allows our partners to sell the Citrix story, to tell our security story, continue to compete — and win — against VMware, and increase our growth in data. With Workspace Suite, we are the only company that can tell a complete story around Apps, Networks, and Data, and we will Win with Secure Workspaces. It is important that our partners be able to talk with new customers about their cloud strategy and where we fit, and talk with our existing customers about how and where our cloud solutions fit in their journey to the Cloud.

We will win together with networking. Our networking products offer our partners a huge growth opportunity in every market, every vertical and every region around the world — an opportunity to convert F5 to NetScaler with new and existing customers. We want our partners to talk with new and existing customers about our NetScaler and SD-WAN solutions. NetScaler and SD-WAN can be attached to any and all Citrix workloads to improve security, performance, and reliability of Workspace Services, leading to increased customer satisfaction.

We will win together with Microsoft. We are working to align with Microsoft in the field and continue to tell a compelling Citrix-Microsoft story. We are asking our partners to focus on three use cases where we believe there is an opportunity for partners. Skype for Business, Win10 VDI use cases, and NetScaler for Azure and Hybrid Clouds all give us the opportunity to win together. Our partners who are not currently partners with Microsoft are encouraged to become Microsoft partners to capitalize on this opportunity and increase revenue by earning incentives from both Citrix and Microsoft.

We will win together in the cloud. While we want our partners to continue selling a lot of on-premises solutions, we are also committed to Walking in the Cloud with them in 2017, helping them capitalize on the cloud opportunity. We see three areas where we can help them make money, create more opportunity and be more relevant.

Transact – With Citrix Cloud, there is an opportunity to make the same or more money. A perpetual XenDesktop deal can qualify for Net New Partner Sourced, Citrix Advisor Rewards, Citrix Advisor Rewards Bonus, and Citrix Advisor Rewards Plus. The good news is that when our partners sell new licenses of Citrix Cloud, all of these same programs apply!
Implement and Maintain – Because only the Citrix software is in the Citrix Cloud, there is more opportunity for our partners. While partners will no longer need to do the install, they will be needed to do all of the design, handle the application and desktop integration, and manage all of these desktop and application workloads.

There is also a huge opportunity to deliver on-going managed services. So, we are rolling out a new Services Delivery Program that enables our partners to sell and deliver Citrix developed offerings. This new program includes:

A Services Delivery Kit that provides documents specific to each offering that were not previously available to our partners. It also includes “How To” training that walks partners through the steps needed to be successful with their services practice.
A commitment to help partners maximize services opportunities and success in target markets including the mid-market and other underserved or emerging areas.
A new optional Citrix Services certification that will be rolled out in March. Partners that secure this new certification will receive additional benefits including elevated partner support, advanced service training and preferred pricing for Service Delivery Kits.

Renew – We will be working on defining how to best handle renewals and will have a Cloud renewal program defined by Synergy in May.

We remain committed to all of our partners whether they sell on-premises or cloud solutions, and look forward to a successful and profitable 2017. We will continue to provide and enable sales of on-premises solutions, while working with partners to capitalize on the opportunity in the cloud.

In 2017, we are asking our partners to:

Start the cloud journey and lead with Workspace Suite;
Attach NetScaler to XenApp and XenDesktop, and position SD-WAN;
Be a better partner with Microsoft.

2017 marks the beginning of my 17^th year with Citrix. During this time, I have met and worked with many of our partners to drive remarkable outcomes for our joint customers and growth for our joint business. I look forward to working even more closely together with them in my new role. We are still all about #CitrixPartnerLove and I am excited to meet as many of our partners as possible this week in Anaheim and in the upcoming year.

Let’s go win together in 2017.

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