Technology has the potential to be transformative. But technology that doesn’t serve the business simply doesn’t add value, regardless of how advanced or cutting-edge it is. That’s why Citrix spends its IT budget and directs its R&D toward innovations that support the strategic goals of business—for itself and for its customers.

“In times of uncertainty, the natural reaction for many companies is to say, ‘We’re going to minimise our expenses, we’re going to huddle down and we’ll try and get through whatever this period may be,” said Martin Duursma, Citrix CTO chair and vice president, Advanced Products Group (AdProd). “However, a time of economic recession is also an opportune time to invest in innovation. Companies that have the mettle to survive realise that”.

How Citrix is adapting
As Citrix demonstrates in its own initiatives and the products it develops for customers, innovating and cost-cutting are not mutually exclusive. Internally, the company is doing both by changing its approach to IT. Initiatives such as self-service programs and an online collaboration tool have helped IT move from purely supporting the company to driving innovation. These changes make a significant impact on a billion-dollar company, but can be adapted to companies of any size.

“As part of the shift to becoming a more strategic and relevant component of the company, IT organisations must move from owning and controlling every aspect of technology to a model that provides services to the business users they support,” said Citrix Chief Information Officer Paul Martine.

For example, Citrix has implemented several human resource applications that allow the department to manage changes on its own, and a new Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) program has been popular with users and widely covered in the press. A BYOC Web site allows employees to register for the program, download the software plug-ins they need to participate and share ideas with others via a discussion board. “Self-service programs like these are a big win for a company,” Martine said, “because they put control in the hands of the business users”.

In addition, Citrix recently implemented a Business Alignment Portal, a tool that’s used to prioritise what projects add the most value to the business. Every functional department has a representative that participates in monthly meetings, and the portal enables the executive team to ensure the prioritisation is aligned with the needs and priorities of the business. The process “provides the visibility that was missing and keeps both IT and the business in sync throughout the year,” Martine said.

Since everyone has visibility to all initiatives in progress, it’s easier to focus on the projects with the best likely outcome and discuss priorities at all levels of the company. “We are having more productive conversations with our business partners and prioritising fewer projects,” Martine said. “When there’s limited funding for projects, it’s important to focus only on those projects the business believes will be most impactful and supportive of their strategic goals”.

What’s the biggest roadblock to implementing innovative programs like these within a company? “The executive committee isn’t the hard sell,” Martine said. “Gaining alignment is the tough part. People in general are scared of change, and can view it as being disruptive, as opposed to being innovative”.

How Citrix is helping customers adapt
Citrix is also thinking in new ways to adapt its future products to help customers in a changing global economy.

AdProd is the heart of the long-term product development efforts at Citrix. Since 2001, the goal of AdProd has been to research and incubate emerging technologies and to help bring products to market. In technology innovation, the timelines are several years out—two to three years before a product idea makes it to prototype, and another year or two to market.

AdProd draws on a number of sources, both internal and external, to anticipate global change and adapt Citrix products to meet the future needs of customers—needs they don’t even recognise yet themselves.

“Our technology strategists speak to customers, talk to industry analysts, industry peers, and track new and emerging areas,” said Duursma. “They build up a sort of radar for what’s starting to become ‘hot,’ and what’s starting to become of interest to customers”.

For example, in the case of desktop virtualisation, AdProd started to develop prototypes on what a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution could be in 2004. Those prototypes led Citrix to the decision to move into the marketplace and introduce a new VDI product, Citrix XenDesktop™ four years later. “We were starting to hear from customers, we were looking at what was happening with technology—all those things led us to start to do the prototype work,” Duursma said. “We developed some early proofs-of-concept that we gave to customers to get feedback as this whole market started to evolve,” he added.

As a technologist, Duursma gets excited about new technologies and their potential to benefit the industry. Thinking as a customer, though, he recognises the extremely challenged environment for IT and recommends a more pragmatic approach. “Focus the bulk of activities around proven technologies that will deliver value,” he said. “But then free up some funds to find some big hits or innovations that may not be large from a dollar perspective but could have a significant effect on the organisation.

“Customers definitely need to hunker down right now and look at how they can be more efficient with what they have,” Duursma said. “But if they don’t keep their eyes open for where trends are going and prepare for that, they won’t be ready to ride that next technology wave”.

Innovation isn’t a project, it’s a state of mind, a recognition that—to paraphrase Einstein—the problems we have today can’t be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. “It’s not about technology for technology’s sake,” said Duursma. “If a customer does that, then they’re going to lose out, because technology without application to the business or ROI is just wasting people’s money.”

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