For those with difficulty adapting, technology is a dangerous weapon. For the ones with vision, nimbleness and adaptability, technology is the tool that unlocks new opportunities for growth and value creation. — McKinsey
Today marks an exciting milestone as we re-launch our longstanding partnership with Microsoft, which has been in place for 25 years, and officially extend it to the UK market. Together, we share the vision to make the cloud a reality for all businesses, and over the next two days we will be convening at Microsoft UK headquarters in Reading to discuss how we can work together to help our customers lead the way in digital transformation.
Everything that we do at Citrix today is focused on moving businesses towards a cloud- and service-based environment, and away from the perpetual license model. The cloud market is seeing incredible momentum, and more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies already use the Microsoft Azure cloud. According to Gartner, subscription models will account for over 80% of licence offerings by 2020, and worldwide spending on public cloud computing will increase rise to $162bn in the same timeframe. The benefits of the subscription model are huge, and the cloud is the one piece of infrastructure that can guarantee access to all other applications and sources, and create a trusted environment to truly enable the mobile scenario. All of this is delivered with minimal upfront risk and much lower capital investment.
Positioning Microsoft Azure as our preferred cloud platform in the UK creates an immensely robust and future-proof offering. From this point forward, every Microsoft customer is a potential Citrix customer, and every Citrix customer is a potential Microsoft customer, making it easy for our customers and future customers to work securely and productively, anytime, anywhere, across any device. Critically, we have optimised the integration of Citrix cloud services with Microsoft Azure so that our customers won’t have to, and we will continue to innovate and customise services for Azure moving forward.
Together with Microsoft, we already have 230,000 joint customers and tens of millions of users who rely on our combined solution every day. Microsoft has owned the mid-market for quite some time and so the partnership offers Citrix scale, and access to a much larger share of market. From a Microsoft Azure perspective, the collaboration is helping to move customers and drive Azure consumption. It’s a win-win for both parties, and means that from today in the UK market, Microsoft and ourselves can go hand in hand to potential customers with our combined offering, and secure business jointly.
Through the partnership we are already seeing tangible results coming to fruition, such as with Systems Powering Healthcare (SPHERE), a provider of IT systems and infrastructure to hospitals, who is currently deploying Citrix Workspace Service running on Microsoft Azure to 7,000 clinicians and hospital administrators across two NHS Foundation Trusts in the UK. Once complete, the new cloud services will immensely improve patient care by allowing doctors and support staff to quickly and securely access data and applications, from anywhere. It’s precisely these sorts of projects where the Citrix-Azure cloud combination is a league above other solutions on the market, offering unprecedented levels of security, manageability and flexibility, all with much a simplified deployment process.
Additionally, it’s important to us that Citrix and Microsoft technology partners, both new and existing, are able to benefit from the UK alliance. Some have been invited to speak at the two-day event, providing them with ample networking opportunity, and opening up new markets and opportunities for them.
It’s an exciting time, and ultimately we are making it easier for business to enhance their efficiency, flexibility and user experience by ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud. Individually, we and Microsoft are making the cloud a reality…but together we are a formidable force in digital transformation.
