<Toronto – The long-standing virtualization alliance between Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) is getting a boost from the launch of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as tools from Citrix and licensing changes from both vendors. The real convergence of the partnership, however, happens in the channel.
At a recent virtualization roundtable event in Toronto, representatives from both Microsoft and Citrix discussed the evolution of the partnership and how advances in virtualization are enabling new opportunities for their respective channel partners, particularly in the small and medium business (SMB) market space.
David Cooper, SE manager for Citrix Canada, said the opportunity for Citrix and Microsoft partners is to take the two vendors’ joint offerings to market as they see fit.
“This absolutely converges in the channel,” said Cooper. “Citrix is not necessarily familiar with all of Microsoft’s offerings, and vice-versa.”
Citrix offers training programs for their partners in Canada around their joint solutions, as well as partner funding to help them do proofs of concept on joint projects.
David Wright, area vice-president for Citrix Canada, said the real opportunity for the channel is to re-engage with customers that are looking for new ways to do things. With virtualization, said Wright, one size no longer fits all, thanks to advances in virtualization from Citrix such as the Dazzle provisioning tool, as well as Microsoft’s new offerings.
“Many will continue to use the traditional PC model where they install the OS, we don’t see that stopping, but we do see people wanting to work in a number of different ways,” said Wright.
While server virtualization is strong and the popularity of desktop virtualization is growing, over the last 18 months Wright said they’ve seen people using virtualization for more and different use cases. Provisioning to mobile devices, giving a worker a head office-like IT experience at home, on the road or in a branch office, all are being enabled by virtualization. The end-point, whether it’s a netbook, handheld, thin client, laptop or PC, is largely becoming irrelevant.
“Customer choice has never been so great in terms of how they can deliver solutions out to their end customers,” said Wright.
For the channel, Wright said the opportunity is to help their clients understand the new computing models enabled by virtualization, how to build models for application and storage virtualization to fit their business needs, and how to address challenges such as security.
“The new ways of doing things give partners opportunities that didn’t even exist 12 to 18 months ago,” said Wright.
Bruce Cowper, virtualization product manager for Microsoft Canada, adds with the complexity introduced with the choice enabled by virualization, the channel is an essential player in helping customers understand the models and how to leverage them fully.
Cowper said virtualization also comes with a strong services revenue upsell for partners, opportunity for training services, and upsell around storage and disaster recovery solutions.
“Often the trick and opportunity for partners is to get in early in the design or deployment phase to help customers understand that they don’t only need hypervisors, but also management tools to help them manage the infrastructure across its lifecycle,” said Cowper.
Also, thanks to virtualization, Cowper said SMBs are now able to adapt more sophisticated solutions in areas such as disaster recovery that were out of their price-range under traditional computing models. Hosting partners and others are able to offer sophisticated applications as a service to the SMB market.
Management tools will be the next major area of virtualization investment, said Cowper. Customers want familiar interfaces and familiar technologies to cut down on the learning curve, and a way to see how all the pieces fit together and deliver return on investment.
Both Microsoft and Citrix have been working on improving and simplifying licensing to make it easier for companies to deploy different forms of virtualization across the enterprise. Citrix’s Cooper admits this has been a challenge for the vendor.
“We’ve done a lot of growing-up as a company over the last three years, and one of the challenges we’ve just overcome is making licensing simpler,” said Cooper.
Citrix has moved to align its pricing and licensing with Microsoft, and now offers the choice of a perpetual license with maintenance fees or a monthly subscription. Businesses can also choose to license by the user, allowing the user to access virtual services from any device, or by the device, allowing multiple users to access virtual services from a shared device, such as a school computer lab.
