Is your team equipped to thrive? How the Citrix Specialist Practicum puts critical skills to the test—and sets partners up for long-term success.
Why is the Citrix Specialist Practicum so critical for partners who want to become Citrix Specialists?
As today’s environments become more and more complex, the need for dependable, knowledgeable and efficient administrators is great. The Citrix Specialist Practicum complements Citrix Certifications by providing a hands-on platform to truly practice and test both design and delivery capabilities and to identify strengths and weaknesses. The candidates are tested on real life scenarios—not all of them common—and gauges the ability of the partner to think out of the box and adapt to IT environment changes that are often unpredictable. Ultimately, this enables partners to provide the highest value to their customers, time after time.
Here are 4 important reasons that the Citrix Specialist Practicum is a must for partners.
Reason #1: Environments are more robust than ever before — One of the chief concerns in any company is scalability. There is always a need to provide the best user experience regardless of the number of users, locations or the size of the environment. With the increase in the amount of locations being networked together, companies are looking for a way to facilitate that need.
Reason #2: Concerns about resiliency — Companies like to feel that when everything is up and running there is nothing to worry about. We all know that when dealing with hardware and software, things happen. In some cases, the time that it takes to recover from these issues has a huge impact on the financial outlook of that company. So, it’s important to take the correct steps prior to any incident occurring—and to make sure that if a problem does occur, the time to identify and resolve it will be significantly shortened.
Reason #3: Test the knowledge of the team — Currently there are four practicums available: Virtualization, Networking for Apps, Networking for Data Center and Mobility. Each has its own set of requirements or tasks to complete. Partners can choose to have their team take one or all of these exams, depending on the area they would like to specialize in. We know that our partners are experts and many of you have proved it! The Citrix practicum continues to help not only build customer confidence but also illustrate proven technical knowledge and hands-on competency.
Reason #4 Greater partner incentives — Specializations provide incremental financial rewards for higher levels of technical competency. Partners can earn an incremental 5 percent upfront discount with CAR Plus and a 50 percent bonus to the standard CAR rebate, which increases their overall incentive profile by at least 50 percent when compared to a “certified” partner.
As a Specialist, partners can attract new customers, gain market coverage and earn repeat business and referrals.
Summary
The Citrix practicum (which highlights storage, active directory, profiles, group policy, and more) simulates a real-life Citrix engagement and provides partners the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge in one of the solution competency areas. It tests the ability of an individual to identify the need and then customize the environment based on that need. Completing the practicum validates your team’s service delivery skills and gives customers confidence when hiring your organization. The Citrix Specialist Track also qualifies and rewards partners for demonstrated technical competency, end to-end sales capability and service delivery expertise in key technology categories.
More about Citrix Specialization:
Review the nuts and bolts of requirements and benefits by visiting Citrix Specialist and check your current certification status by using the Specialist Progress Manager Tool. Remember: the individual that takes the practicum must also be certified in the same technology area.
Learn more at Citrix Specialist competencies.
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