This week, I’m thrilled to be at Microsoft’s annual partner conference Microsoft Inspire, where Citrix has built a robust presence as a platinum sponsor. The energy at our booth has generated excitement throughout the event as we share why there has never been a better time to be a Citrix partner! Successful partners pick ISVs who offer innovative solutions that resonate with customers. They choose those who easily extend their already successful practice to generate incremental revenue. And finding ISVs who offer great incentives is the icing on the cake. If this sounds like the way you determine business, 2019 is definitely the year to consider Citrix!

The Power of Citrix + Microsoft

Citrix and Microsoft have worked closely for 30 years to provide customers with innovative, unique solutions to solve business challenges. Citrix boasts an amazing ecosystem of more than 10,000 partners who transact an astonishing 98 percent of our business with customers. And our partner program is one of the best in the industry!

For customers who need more than a Microsoft-native solution, Citrix enhances what Microsoft already provides, and we’ve been delivering those capabilities  successfully together for decades. Citrix partners enjoy differentiated offerings to grow their business with base and premium solutions. Customers and partners who need flexibility, scalability, and choice have benefited for decades from our unique relationship with Microsoft.

NEW Citrix Solutions with Microsoft

What is especially exciting this year is the number of solutions we’re bringing to market with Microsoft that appeal to all types of Microsoft partners. At Inspire, we have more than 40 specialists across each of our solution areas, eager to share the latest wave of innovation and joint solutions from Citrix and Microsoft.

You might be thinking, “Oh, I know Citrix. They do virtualization.” And, yes, we are well known for our comprehensive virtualization solutions. But customers are demanding new solutions to help them transition to the cloud. Citrix has responded with cloud subscription offerings enabling customers to cost effectively move their workloads to the cloud of their choice, at their desired pace. An excellent example is our integration work with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service and Windows Virtual Desktop. Many customers are excited about Microsoft’s new service, launching globally later this year. Windows Virtual Desktop is an Azure-only solution, however, and most customers will need to integrate with their existing Citrix environment. Or, they might need to connect Windows Virtual Desktop environments with on-prem or hybrid multi-cloud solutions already in place. The integration work we’ve been building with Microsoft for the last 18 months ensures that customers and partners can take full advantage on day one of this new Microsoft offering.

A subset of that work is Citrix Managed Desktops (soon to be released). Citrix partners are the primary route to market for this exciting offering. Partners will be able to deliver a Windows Virtual Desktop-based solution to their customers rapidly, at scale, and cost effectively. Plus, they’ll be able to do it for a single price that includes access to the service, the Microsoft 365 licenses required, and the Azure capacity that can be easily re-delivered to their own customers. Citrix has done the heavy lifting by provisioning and optimizing the underlying infrastructure, giving partners more time to sell and build highly profitable, value-added services on top of the platform.

You might say, “That’s great, but I’m a Microsoft Cloud Productivity partner. What can Citrix offer me?” We’ve been hard at work on several things, including Citrix SD-WAN optimized for Office 365 which can reduce latency by up to 80 percent for Office 365 traffic. By accelerating and optimizing the underlying WAN links, users will experience buttery smooth voice and video for even latency sensitive apps (like Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business). Check out this customer case study.

Additionally, building on our success with the Skype Realtime Optimization Pack, we worked closely with Microsoft to develop the Microsoft Teams Optimization Pack. The virtual environment optimizes the Teams experience. The full fidelity voice and video experience is indistinguishable from a native installation of the full Teams client, and there are additional optimizations for HDX.

My colleague, Scott Swanburg, recently published a blog that highlights how Citrix Service Providers (CSPs) are scaling their businesses with Citrix and Microsoft. CSP partners see up to 40 percent YoY growth utilizing Citrix Workspace technology, roadmaps, and implementation across diverse market verticals. They also create new monthly recurring revenue streams via cloud subscription-based IT services, and realize margins of greater than 45 percent

Finally, we have great things for those who are Microsoft Dynamics partners, including new integrations with Microsoft Dynamics and our intelligent Workspace offering. By using Secure Browser to not only securely lock down your customers’ most sensitive sales data, but to place it in Azure in close proximity to the Dynamics tools themselves, you can provide better performance and customer satisfaction.

Visit us at the Citrix booth #1726 this week at Inspire, where you can drill down into these topics and more! No matter what kind of Microsoft partner you are, come see how Citrix can help you grow your business, help your customers migrate to the cloud, help change the future of work, and grab your share of the cloud market!

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