Citrix Evaluates Its Partners on Business And Technological Compatibility

Citrix - an American multinational software company, it offers software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing, server, application and desktop virtualization and networking technologies.

Citrix works on a unified, contextual and secure approach to provide consumer-centric solutions for a better way to work. Where its partners help in bring the future of work to customers.

Thus, to further expand on its partner reach and marketing strategies, Raghuram Krishnan, Director, Partner, Citrix India elaborated on the following aspects:

Expansion of Partner Reach

With the Digital India program giving wings to India’s technology landscape, companies across industries have re-aligned themselves to be more digitally savvy. In this scenario, we at Citrix find ourselves to be favourably positioned to enable this digitization with the help of our partners. Therefore; we believe every relevant partner in the market has the potential to engage in business with Citrix.

Our entire partner landscape is jointly addressed by Citrix and its distributors. The strategic and transformational partners are managed directly by Citrix while the growth & emerging partners are managed by the distributors with help & guidance from Citrix. Therefore, through this robust partner network, we are able to expand our reach to a wider base of customers across geographies.

Profitability of partners

We at Citrix, believe in mutual growth along with our partners. We are completely channel driven and have always recognized the important role that our partners play in our growth. Their value-driven insights are an essential component of our business strategy.

The contributory part played by our partners in Citrix’s overall development drives our dedication to create and maintain a healthy and mutually advantageous partnership. We, therefore, work closely with our partners to identify areas that could potentially disrupt the IT landscape. Through their help, we can cover a wider customer base across the country.

In alignment with how most businesses operate, profitability is a core target for us as well. This said, we also recognize the importance of our partners’ profitability. Therefore, at Citrix, we are extremely conscious of this and we strive towards ensuring that the overall business for the partners with Citrix is not only profitable but is also relevant.

Citrix - Marketing/ GTM strategy For India

Over the last few years, we have seen radical changes in the way technology is used to enhance processes at work. With the dawn of the cloud and mobile era, businesses are pulling in their resources to leverage technology and garner the best results. Having recognized this constantly evolving and growing market, we also have to keep revamping our GTM and marketing strategy.

Not so long ago, we were pioneers in the virtualization space. Today, along with virtualization, we have also emerged as industry leaders in the SDWAN and load balancer space. Citrix offers complete workspace solutions in organizations across the globe with a host of offerings in the cloud, enterprise mobility management, networking, virtualization and analytics space. With this approach, we are getting one step closer toward powering the future of work. Our GTMhas reflected our overall strategy and growth aspirations of Citrix as well as our partners.

Training Programs Mandatory For Citrix Channel Partners

Along with the usual sales and pre-sales training that we conduct on a regular basis, we also have 3 levels of certification – Silver, Gold and Platinum. Any partner who registers with us is a Silver partner; basis the specializations of the partner along with the revenue generated by the partner on an annual basis, the partners get classified as Gold & Platinum partners with Platinum being the highest level of certification.

The criterion for Selecting Partners

A number of variables are involved in selecting the right partner for Citrix. There are two ways of assessing a partner – business and technological compatibility.

From a business standpoint, in order for both to grow mutually, we need to strike a balance in terms of our corporate vision, sales strategies, target market and focus to drive the business forward. Further, their orientation toward pre and post sales as well as their sales strength & reach can be strong contributors to their selection.

If we were to consider technological compatibility, we should be able to combine the technical skill, expertise and experience of our partners with our own to achieve the best possible outcome. Further, it is pertinent to ensure that the range of technologies and partnerships that they take up in their business complement our own.