“We expect this to be a great year for us and our channel partners” - Citrix India

In a candid interaction with DQ Channels, Raghuram Krishnan, Director – Partner, Citrix India shared the channel strategies and benefits for channel partners associated with Citrix.

1) Could you give us a brief overview of Citrix in India?

As businesses move toward digitization, they are often set back by the complexity and limitations of legacy systems and concerns that are hindering a complete transition to the digital future. At Citrix, we help offer people-centric solutions for a better way to work, minimize complexity and power the future of work.

Our commitment towards achieving this vision is evident through our R&D centre located in Bengaluru, which is also one of our largest locations worldwide, helping us understand customer needs better and in the product development stage itself believe, through our industry expertise and innovation efforts we are gradually becoming the preferred and most-used solution for cloud technology, virtualization, networking, and intelligent analytics.

We continue to partner with our customers, helping them advance digital workspace technology internally, to unify and enrich the user experience, and simplify IT’s the ability to configure, monitor, and manage today’s increasingly complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

2)  How have you defined your channel strategy for India this year?

We expect this to be a great year for us and our channel partners as they will experience immense opportunities in growing their business with us. From a growth perspective, one of our key partner channel strategies is geo-expansion in Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities, as this helps us in taking our offerings to the under-represented markets. We’re also shifting our focus towards substantially growing our addressable market with new offerings.

While Citrix has always been known to deliver virtualization products, we continue to innovate and expand our offerings. Helping customers work how, when and where they need to is part of our passion. Be it virtualization, networking, cloud or mobility solutions, we are constantly working on new innovations, technologies and ways to work, including; Citrix Workspace and Citrix Cloud technology.

For example, with Citrix Workspace, we can support customers work differently, perhaps a customer who doesn’t require virtualization. Citrix Workspace serves as an access point while unifying Citrix's traditional on-premise solutions like Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, and Citrix Cloud, an umbrella platform for around 15 Citrix services and public cloud integrations. Effectively, we have increased our total addressable market with our intelligent workspace offering, working in sync with our partners and the needs of their customers, helping forge the future of work.

3) What does Citrix India look for in a channel partner?

Globally, Citrix partners have delivered an incredible number of new Citrix Cloud customers and helped grow our cloud business by over 300 percent. A host of variables are taken into consideration when selecting the right partner for Citrix. There are two ways of assessing a partner – business and technological compatibility.

From a business standpoint, for both to grow mutually, we need to strike a balance in terms of our corporate vision, sales strategies, target market and focus in order to drive the business forward. Additionally, their orientation towards pre and post sales as well as their sales strength & reach lead to be strong contributors to their effective and accurate selection.

When taking technological compatibility into consideration, we combine their technical skill, expertise, and experience with our own, to achieve the best possible outcome. Moreover, it is crucial to ensure that the gamut of technological expertise and partnerships that they take up in their business, complement our own.

4) What are some of the benefits for channel partners associated with Citrix India?

Citrix solutions give partners the opportunity to deliver more customer value by enabling them to grow their business and increase their customer base. Equipped with Citrix solutions, our partners can enable customers to manage complexity, and embrace hybrid multi-clouds while supporting legacy technologies.

Partners can also experience some of the key benefits of associating with Citrix like–

• People-centric, secure solutions for customers and prospects with Citrix Digital Workspace, Networking and Analytics
• Access to a multitude of tools and resources to help partners market and sell services or Citrix-compatible solution offering

The opportunities that our partners will experience with us in growing their business is vast. Citrix not only has the solutions that customers need but is also playing a major role in helping the customers in their digital transformation journey. With the proliferation and growth of digital tools through technologically enhanced workspaces, we look forward to working closely with our partners in the years ahead.

5) What are the target verticals for Citrix India products and solutions?

As enablers in the digital transformation space, we find ourselves distinctively positioned to make this possible for organizations across industries. In the India market, we have created for ourselves a strong footing in the banking, public sector, manufacturing, telecom, and IT/ITes space.