Citrix Summit is always the perfect way to begin a new year, but this year was special for me since I was attending for the first time as the WW partner leader. I came away from Summit with tremendous confidence in the commitment of Citrix partners and sales teams to successfully collaborate on achieving shared goals in the coming months.
Winning together
It was fantastic to meet one-on-one with more than 30 partners from around the world, and experience your energy, enthusiasm and sense of belonging first hand. I heard from established partners that you feel very comfortable as part of the Citrix community, and from new partners that “Citrix is different and I like it” – my thoughts exactly!
One of the things that stood out to me most at this year was how well Bert Jacobs’ message speaks to our culture and values at Citrix. As Chief Optimism Officer at Life Is Good, he stressed that it’s possible drive great results while doing good. It’s a sentiment that was echoed by many of you who believe that companies contributing to the greater good tend to be more successful.
Winning together highlights the importance of Unity, as well as the other Citrix cultural values of Integrity, Respect, Curiosity and Courage that Kirill Tatarinov, Citrix CEO, introduced on stage at Summit. I see these reflected in our partner relationships and I know they’re a piece of what sets us apart. I’ll be talking about their significance to our partner ecosystem – and how we will continuously improve – in an upcoming blog series.
“Walking” in the cloud
Not surprisingly, one of the major areas of discussion was transitioning to the cloud. Many of you are interested in Citrix Cloud but are concerned about the shift from the traditional product implementation business to a managed services model. You’re looking for tools, training and guidance so so can be successful in the cloud arena. We hear you and we get it.
As we shift from “crawling” to “walking” in the cloud this year (get ready to run in 2018!), it’s clear that Citrix must provide robust enablement in both the sales and technical aspects of cloud to help you build, market and grow your business. We need to help you move your customers to the cloud, stand up licenses and, once customers have made the transition, deliver managed services – including managing non-Citrix workloads hosted in public, private or hybrid clouds.
Enablement and more
As Kirill said, this is the year for walking in the cloud, and Citrix stands ready to give partners a hand in doing just that.
In fact, whether it’s for cloud or any of our other solutions and services, enabling partners so that we can win together is one of my three top commitments to you.
The second is to continue simplifying processes and programs so you can do business with Citrix more easily. This issue resonated with many partners at Summit.
The third commitment is to be your first and best partner.
I’ve already received lots of suggestions on how we can work better together. I’ll build on these ideas by continuing to meet with, solicit input from, and work directly with you.
Keep Summit momentum going
For those who came to the Summit event, thanks for joining us and contributing your thoughts and suggestions for strengthening the partnership. I’m looking forward to meeting many more of you during my travels.
If you weren’t able to attend, catch up on Summit news by watching the recorded keynotes, downloading presentations from SalesIQ, reading the blogs and sharing SummitToGo (available February 10) with your team.
Finally, I wish you every success as we win together in 2017.
Craig Stilwell, Worldwide VP of Partner Sales & Strategy, has more than 23 years of technology experience, including more than 17 years at Citrix, most recently serving as Area Vice President of our U.S. Commercial business responsible for all sales and products in the U.S. Commercial segment. Previously, Craig served in several roles at Citrix, notably as Vice President of Americas Channel Sales & Field Operations.
Connect with him on Twitter: @CraigTStilwell
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