Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Citrix Systems Inc., has set a $1 billion revenue goal for the company. Currently, Citrix revenue is about half that. To accomplish this goal, Templeton was at the Nasdaq Marketsite in New York; yesterday to unveil a new product strategy designed to bring its server-based
computing solutions to the enterprise.
The company’s flagship product MetaFrame XP Presentation Server will now be part of Citrix MetaFrame Access Suite. The suite will also include Citrix MetaFrame Secure Access Manager (available end of month), Citrix MetaFrame Conferencing Manager (scheduled for release Q2) and Citrix MetaFrame Password Manager (also scheduled for release in Q2).
The suite is suppose to help consolidate multiple technologies within an organization, including all legacy data and applications, in an on-demand enterprise that will enable users to securely access all enterprise application and information resources from any device over any connection at anytime.
To ensure a stronger foothold in the enterprise, Citrix has forged partnerships with Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Global Services. This move, however, will not change the company’s 100 per cent channel policy.
According to David Jones, senior vice-president of corporate development for Citrix, the company may realize some business direct, but the channel will get reimbursed and all product fulfillment will still go through the channel.
Templeton said that Citrix is expanding the opportunity for partners in infrastructure services with this move. “”Partnering is a core value to bringing these solutions to market. Our suite is a safe choice for customers because it is a complete end to end solution that manages the heterogeneity of apps and data,”” he said.
Scot Hillier, vice-president of DataLan Corp., a platinum partner of Citrix since 1997 is not concerned with Citrix bringing in high profile vendors to help them establish themselves in the enterprise space.
“”We know them and some of them thought they needed our expertise. We work on account strategy with them within that large account. There is no conflict with them. We add additional value,”” he said.
Hillier called the new product strategy from Citrix “”a dream come true for the channel.””
With the MetaFrame suite it is all done for you. You are able to build specific solutions that can be tailored for specific verticals. The same presentation solution is good for K-12 education market,”” Hillier said.
“”We can use out of the box pieces to develop solutions. It doesn’t take nine consultants nine months to build the solution anymore,”” he added.
According to Hillier, the business is changing for resellers. Custom application development is going offshore and resellers such as DataLan has recognized this change and become the “”designers or the architects”” of the solution.
“”We don’t do programming; we do problem solving and