Citrix today launched a new channel program, designed to help partners fully leverage its expanding portfolio of solutions to keep pace with the rapid rate of technological change and increase their competitiveness in the marketplace. With the innovative new Citrix Solution Advisor (CSA) program, partners will be equipped to realize faster revenue growth by investing in and leveraging technology specialization to differentiate their capabilities and offerings to ensure customers derive maximum value from Citrix solutions. The new program will offer the nearly 9,000 Citrix Solution Advisors, across the globe, simplified certification, adjusted revenue requirements and new incremental benefits and incentives.
Citrix Specializations, the cornerstone of the program, will qualify, brand, recommend and reward partners for demonstrated technical competency, end-to-end sales capability and service delivery to customers. The Specialization program is comprised of tracks that offer partners the opportunity to self-select the technical category that best reflects their current business model and then add other competencies as their business evolves. Each track equips partners to acquire technical expertise and best practices for implementation success with Citrix solutions in the areas of virtualization, mobility management and networking.
The new CSA program is the central pillar of the new Citrix Partner Growth Plan, designed to help CSAs achieve significant year-over-year revenue growth. The plan includes three additional pillars, including field and partner collaboration, focused partner enablement across the customer lifecycle, and robust demand generation focused on multi-touch marketing campaigns.
Citrix will focus on energizing collaboration and engagement between our field teams and partners by aligning partners and Citrix field sales resources to focus on opportunities in specific customer segments, and simplified and accelerated incentive approvals.
Citrix recognizes that the key to continued and sustainable partner productivity is enablement and will introduce new tools, resources and programs. These additional investments are targeted to maximize efficiency of partners at every stage of the sales and services lifecycle from technical skills development, sales execution through to successful implementation of solutions.
To expand the breadth and depth of integrated solutions across apps, desktops, data and collaboration delivered by the partner community, Citrix believes that CSAs play a critical role in demand generation and new customer acquisition. To enhance partners’ marketing capacity and effectiveness, Citrix will help partners identify growth opportunities in target markets and enable them to better plan and execute effective multi-touch marketing campaigns, made available through best-in-class marketing platforms.
The Partner Growth Plan launches on January 13 with the new CSA Program and Specializations taking effect immediately. The remaining three pillars will be strategically rolled out over the next 12 months.
Quotes
“Citrix continues to innovate, improve and adapt its channel programs as it recognizes that channel partners are the driving force behind the company and are integral to its overall success and the success of our shared customers. Through our new Citrix Solution Advisor program with Specializations, we are helping partners differentiate themselves from their competition and deliver an outstanding experience for their customers. Our new partner sales onboarding process complements our Specialist tracks and will enable our partners to better capitalize on market opportunities.” Carlos Sartorius, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Services, Citrix
“We have been and continue to be fully committed to making Citrix the most profitable business for our partners and enabling a best-in-class experience for our joint customers. The new channel program with Specializations will help our Solution Advisors drive higher satisfaction, confidence, and loyalty with their customers and, in turn, realize significant year-over-year revenue. We will continue to innovate our channel program, tools and resources to ensure that our partners can differentiate themselves and gain a competitive edge in the market.” Tom Flink, vice president, Channels & Market Development Sales, Citrix
“The launch of Specializations as part of the Citrix Solution Advisor program is a natural and well thought out evolution of Citrix’s already successful partner program. IDC’s experience of the program in the past has been that it is well structured and has clear rewards for partner exhibiting the right behaviors. The addition of specializations, with the same guiding principles of clarity and clear rewards, allows the Citrix partner ecosystem to grow with Citrix, and also differentiate within the ecosystem.” Steve White, Program Director, IDC Channels and Alliances
“Solution Providers are under intense pressure to transform their businesses today, which requires them to expand beyond their traditional comfort zones. Both sales and services teams must learn to engage in high-level customer conversations around business outcomes, and Citrix’ new CSA program has been developed with this imperative in mind with a focus on Specialist Tracks that are paired with enhanced financial incentives. These incremental rewards motivate partner investment in the same technical, sales and services skills that will make partner transformation both faster and more profitable, and ultimately sustainable. Sounds a lot like win-win-win to me.” Kevin Rhone, Director, ESG Channel Acceleration
“With the Citrix Partner Growth Plan, Citrix is demonstrating that it has listened to its partners and is providing what we need to be successful in an increasingly competitive market. Today’s announcement shows Citrix commitment through enhanced sales and field collaboration, strengthened partner enablement, and robust co-marketing opportunities.” Frank Pulliza, Co-Founder and COO, LPS Integration
“Our customers look to us for the deep technical expertise and solutions that help their employees work more efficiently and ultimately drive success for their business. The new Citrix CSA program with specializations will continue to provide us with the training required to address our customers’ most difficult networking, virtualization and mobility management challenges, and the competitive differentiation that will enable us to win business in today’s market.” Rachel Evans, general manager, Business Development, Long View Systems
Related Links
- Citrix Solution Advisor Specialist web page
- Blog: Sneak Peak of the New Citrix Solution Advisor Program
Follow Citrix
About Citrix
Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leader in mobile workspaces, providing virtualization, mobility management, networking and cloud services to enable new ways to work better. Citrix solutions power business mobility through secure, personal workspaces that provide people with instant access to apps, desktops, data and communications on any device, over any network and cloud. With annual revenue in 2013 of $2.9 billion, Citrix solutions are in use at more than 330,000 organizations and by over 100 million users globally. Learn more at www.citrix.com.
For Investors
This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the IT spending environment, revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products and services, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.
© 2015 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix® is a trademark of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Contacts:
Jason L. Wyse, 786-449-3740
jason.wyse@citrix.com
Twitter:
@CitrixPR
