2018 was an awesome year! We launched the new Citrix partner program and since then, over 900 new partners have transacted with us, while partner productivity increased by 16 percent. Our partners delivered an incredible number of new Citrix Cloud customers and helped us grow our cloud business by over 300 percent.

By reducing the number of incentive programs, simplifying the submission process, and adding automation for approval, we’ve been able to deliver a streamlined experience for our partners, making great strides in becoming the first and best partner to our global ecosystem in a cloud-first era.

Now we’re focused on making 2019 even bigger and better.

Today, we kicked off the year at the biggest Citrix Summit ever. We welcomed over 5,000 partners and employees from across the globe and outlined how there’s never been a better opportunity for our partners than right now.

The pace of digital transformation is accelerating as customers look to provide employees with choice and a great experience while maintaining high levels of security. This has led to the proliferation of SaaS apps, and increasingly complex and expensive hybrid multi-cloud environments.

Citrix is uniquely positioned to help companies address this complexity, and our partners have an incredible opportunity to move beyond virtualization. The total addressable market for Intelligent Workspaces enabled by Citrix Cloud is 4X greater than the market for app and desktop virtualization. Partners now have the opportunity to approach dormant customers, go back to existing customers and look beyond their current account base to ignite new accounts with a solution to address the issues related to sprawling IT environments.

With the addition of Sapho, we’re now able to fully deliver on the vision for the Intelligent Workspace. Sapho technology, which is included at no additional cost to all customers, provides cloud customers with the same functionality as they get with their on-premises solutions. Our partners now have one less barrier when working with customers that are hesitant to move to the cloud.

As they look to offer more choice, experience and security, companies are increasingly dealing with hybrid multi-clouds. However, it is not easy to uncouple and seamlessly secure their multiple clouds. Citrix networking solutions give partners the opportunity to deliver more customer value by enabling them to do just that.

Citrix has the solutions customers need. Partners that embrace Intelligent Workspaces will enjoy an expanded addressable market and new sales opportunities. Armed with Citrix solutions, our partners can enable customers to manage complexity, and embrace hybrid multi-clouds while supporting legacy technologies. Businesses can manage the past when they need to, while still embracing the future.

We have the right partners. I am extremely proud of what our partners accomplished in 2018. But we aren’t done, and I’m excited about what we’ll do together in 2019. In order to take advantage of the opportunity that is in front of us, I want to challenge our partners to get trained and talk to customers about Intelligent Workspaces.

2019 will be the biggest and best year ever for Citrix and our partners, and I look forward to working closely with our partners to change the entire industry together!