This is a guest post by Jim Airdo, Director of Business Development, IGEL.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2020, where the technical vision and go-to-market strategy for IGEL and Citrix are more laser-focused than ever.

With the recent announcement of the IGEL and Citrix offering through Ingram Micro, the three companies have come together to address the end of support for Windows 7 going into effect this month. Citrix Managed Desktops is the most mature and stable desktop-as-a-service offering in the industry and is recognized by IGEL and our purpose-built Linux OS for cloud workspaces as a customer favorite.

With Citrix Managed Desktops, organizations can take advantage of secure and simplified delivery of apps, desktops, and data without having to hire dedicated IT staff to run such deployments. This makes it easier for small businesses to adopt virtualization, including Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly Windows Virtual Desktop).

By implementing IGEL OS, most Windows 7 customers can move at light speed to a simple-to-manage endpoint solution that removes Windows 7 and moves to the Citrix Managed Desktop solution running Windows 10 in the Azure cloud. Citrix continues to prove the value it brings to the Azure cloud in the areas of initial configuration, ease of use, day-to-day management, and ongoing scalability — factors that are essential for most IT organizations.

The choice by Microsoft to enlist IGEL OS as their Linux OS client for Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix as one of their top partners for the management plane reinforces that innovation plus execution are at the heart of what IGEL and Citrix offer to both customers and partners.

The partnership between Citrix and IGEL has been a longstanding friendship both professionally and personally over many decades of thin-client computing and virtualization, imparting a loyalty that not many in our industry enjoy. IGEL stands as one of the early Citrix Ready Workspace Endpoint partners.

So, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Raise a toast to 2020 and look forward to even more innovation and partnering at Citrix Summit and our own DISRUPT 2020, the world’s premier cloud workspaces forum! We look forward to meeting with you at Citrix Summit 2020 in Orlando, at booth # 407.