It seems so long ago, but it’s only been a little over a month since I was getting ready to welcome you to Citrix Summit 2018.

Thank you to all of you who were able to join us in Anaheim. The bottom line is that Summit is about partners—we use the #CitrixPartnerLove hashtag to tell you how important you are to Citrix, but Summit is how we show you.

This conference is about enabling our partners to understand our vision and communicate it to customers, and to position you for a successful year. It’s a compelling event that you make even better. As our president and CEO David Henshall said in the Vision Keynote, business truly is a team sport.

Ultimate incentives

In that same keynote, I told you partners spent 99,000 hours training in 2017. That’s an enormous commitment that shows us how important our business is to you. We share that commitment: with 98% of all deals going through our partners, we simply couldn’t do it without you.

Our customers could not make the strategic shift to cloud without your guidance, which is why we’ve spent so much time preparing for the launch of Citrix Ultimate Rewards, the new incentive program I introduced at Summit went into effect February 10. In a very short amount of time, there have been hundreds of registrations.

This new program was a year in the planning and talking to analysts and our partners to build a market-leading program that would make it easier to do business with Citrix. We’ve combined five separate programs into a single program and moved the benefits up front where you can see them in the form of discounts.

Citrix Ultimate Rewards has some great features that you can read more about, such as incentives for finding new deals as well as for the value-added selling activities that it takes to close business. We completely redesigned the program to make Citrix your first and best partner, and I’ll look forward to hearing what you think about it.

Year-round Summit training

One of the many ways that Summit delivers value is by giving you insight into Citrix strategy. Summit breakout sessions were packed with the resources you need to understand where the portfolio is headed, how to transition our customers to cloud, and how to make cloud profitable for your organization.

Now that sessions are available on Citrix SalesIQ, along with keynotes and speaker presentations, I encourage you to use this resource if you missed any of this great content, whether or not you attended Summit.

These are the breakouts that had the most attendance, so get started here, as you explore the on-demand videos:

SELL126: Selling Citrix Cloud services to existing Citrix customers

This is the session for cloud transition and trade-up. Principal product marketing manager Brett Waldman walks you through use cases and steps to identify the ideal customer profile, and discusses key value-add features that differentiate cloud services from on-premises, perpetual deployments. By the end of this session, you will have the knowledge you need to bring your customers to the cloud.

SELL112: Understanding the Citrix Analytics story

During the Tech Talks keynote, we heard about the power of Citrix solutions working together—the more products your customers deploy, the deeper the data available that can be used in analytics. This session introduces the Citrix Analytics vision and portfolio: through customer case studies, you’ll learn how the application performance management and security insights delivered with NetScaler Management and Analytics, Citrix Director and Citrix Smart Tools can enable the customer journey to the cloud and differentiate our overall offering.

TECH109: Understanding Citrix App Layering functionality, and integration

App layering is the best way to separate apps from the underlying OS so they can be managed and delivered from anywhere. In this session, James Hsu and Ron Oglesby review how layering works, both the logical blending of the file system and the registry. They’ll show you the basics, the layer deployment options available, and how the Citrix App Layering virtual appliance integrates with existing environments.

TECH309: XenApp and XenDesktop tech update (January 2018 edition)

With quarterly releases, it is extremely important to understand what new options are available, what optimizations are recommended and how to properly design around the latest technologies. Dan Feller did an excellent job again this year covering the latest technical advancements in XenApp and XenDesktop, including testing and optimizations results as well as updated design best practices.

Your thoughts on Summit

In the weeks since we’ve been back from Anaheim, I’ve talked to some of you about the highlights and your great experience, and I’ve really enjoyed reading your comments in the survey. Thanks for taking the time to fill these out and give us your feedback. I want to share a few of them with you here—maybe it will inspire you to save the date for Citrix Summit 2019, January 7-8 in Orlando, Florida.

“Every year I very much look forward to Summit. It’s great to see old Citrix friends and meet new ones. It’s evident that Citrix truly views partners as extensions of their team and there’s a ton of great information which we can use to grow our business and better meet our customers’ needs.” Mary Thulen, manager of partner relations at Burwood Group.

“Citrix Summit is the best opportunity to learn about Citrix and get in touch directly with Citrix employees and other partners. An event you should not miss.”Dirk Beckel, manager, technology & consulting at Makro Factory GmbH & Co. KG

“The ability to meet with partners and Citrix sales reps face to face and build meaningful relationships—this is an experience that goes a long way. People work so much better with one another after meeting face to face. I look forward to growing our Citrix business immensely in 2018.”Chase Gianattasio, channel development representative, Arrow Electronics

We shared intensive training and great fun at Summit, and now it’s time for the payoff as we move further into 2018 and accelerate to the cloud. I hope you’ll consider joining us at Citrix Synergy 2018, May 8–10 in Anaheim, the annual customer-first sales event. Partners who attend Synergy with their customers create 68% more opportunities—you can learn more at www.citrixsynergy.com.


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