History — the experiences we encounter and endure — helps to shape our future. While history can teach us lessons to avoid repeating, the past can also form positive, lasting impressions and memories.

History is what sets the Citrix and Microsoft relationship apart from other tech company partnerships. Over close to three decades, our two organizations have created a story together. It’s a story that continually evolves and grows alongside the market and our customers. We’ve teamed up on hundreds of product integrations, collaborated on varying go-to-market strategies, and joined forces to deliver positive outcomes for more joint customers than we can count.

These shared experiences have shaped our culture, our people, our partners, and shapes our future together. The impact of these experiences is visible throughout elements of each company’s philosophy and strategy. We see the world in similar ways, always putting the user experience at the center of everything we build. Just consider the importance we both place on culture and diversity and the authenticity of our leaders. We’ve both made longstanding commitments to build a global, enterprise-class partner ecosystem. It’s also evident in the tangible results we continue to deliver together, including a few highlights from this year:

  • Citrix Cloud on Azure: Citrix Cloud is built on Azure and throughout 2018, we strengthened our offering by bringing Citrix Cloud Services to Asia-Pacific and launching Citrix App and Desktop Services on Microsoft Azure Government cloud.
  • Joint Customers: Gavriella Schuster, the amazing partner leader at Microsoft, recently shared the early results of their Co-sell program, a formal mechanism introduced to enable them to collaboratively sell alongside partners with high-value solutions built on Microsoft technology. Since the program’s inception, Microsoft has jointly worked with their partners on more than 100,000 customer opportunities. Citrix is thrilled to be among their top five global Co-sell partners, but more importantly, we’re proud of the outcomes this ongoing engagement delivered for joint customers like Nudie Jeans, ÅF, and Mazars, to name a few.
  • SD-WAN: Earlier this summer, Citrix became among the first to partner with Microsoft to offer our SD-WAN solution as the on-ramp to Azure Virtual WAN, enabling customers to simply and cost effectively connect their branches to the Azure global backbone.

More than ever, customers value our shared history. They trust that we’ll continue to invest in product integrations. They feel confident that we know how to work together — strategically and on-the-ground. And they recognize that our partnership will minimize their risk and complexity, and drive greater value, as they look to harness the potential of cloud.

What the market saw in the first half of 2018 was just the beginning. Today, we’re excited to announce the Citrix and Microsoft Cloud Alliance partner program, a new chapter in our shared history book. This program will accelerate customers’ cloud transitions and deliver on our long-standing commitment to the global channel ecosystems that support these customers.

The Role of the Channel in the Move to Cloud

Cloud presents unlimited opportunities, but like anything new it can also breed uncertainty. Customers need to partner with companies that can remove that uncertainty. They require the support of true cloud experts, with enterprise built into their DNA. They want partners who understand their business, what drives their top and bottom line, and how to strategically position the move to cloud. Customers need Microsoft, Citrix, and our partners to answer questions such as:

  • What other big name companies — just like mine — have made the move to cloud?
  • How did they build a business case to rationalize the investment to other stakeholders?
  • What lessons did they learn — good and bad?
  • How do I calculate the real costs as we move to cloud?

Customers also need partners with technical bench strength and real-world cloud expertise. Partners that understand how to manage Citrix Workspace on Azure and hybrid environments. Partners that can stand-up a cloud proof-of-concept (POC) to convince their stakeholders and end-users of the value, or address the difficult questions that security and compliance teams might ask.

Lucky for us, these partners exist in our global partner ecosystems because we’ve been committed to fostering our channel ecosystem’s cloud expertise. We built partner incentive programs that reward these skills. We invested in training to drive partner competency, including a Citrix Cloud certification with an Azure integration add-on, which 330 partners (and growing) already received!

As importantly, these are channel partners that businesses of all sizes can trust. They know our joint customer’s current infrastructure, their requirements and what’s needed to move their workloads to cloud.

Writing Another Chapter in History: The Cloud Alliance Program Forms

The Citrix and Microsoft Cloud Alliance program formalizes the joint commitment our companies plan to make in partners that can accelerate and ease our customers’ move towards cloud.

For our joint customers, the program ensures they can find and access partners with the expertise, skills, and service offerings needed to seamlessly transition their company to cloud, and realize the full potential of Citrix Workspace on Microsoft Azure. This includes partners who serve a cross-section of industries, company sizes and geographies to offer all of our global customers access to the best-of-the-best.

For partners, the program equips them with extra training and tools, market visibility and special marketing programs. They also get an investment for the time their top technical experts commit to building a successful Citrix Workspace on Azure POC. To continue supporting the rapid growth of Citrix workloads on Azure, we expect to find and empower more “rising star” cloud partners. We will co-invest to enable top Citrix Cloud partners to strengthen their Azure competency levels, as well as recruit new “born in the cloud” Azure partners into the Citrix ecosystem. Partners will receive a special designation as the customers they support through this program move from pilot into production. This allows the industry at-large to identify those channel partners that can deliver the experience they require now, and support them for the future.

There’s never a better time than now to invest in Citrix and Microsoft. Learn what a few of our joint partners, like Brasoftware and Inframon, say about Citrix and Azure, and hear why more cloud-first Azure partners are joining the Citrix ecosystem.

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