UPDATED 10:15 EDT / JUNE 17 2011

Thinking Back on Citrix Synergy

Having taken some time to digest the event (and catch up on other stuff), here are my brief thoughts on Citrix a few weeks removed from Synergy 2011. There was clearly a very positive vibe around the company and the conference this year. And while it is tough to pinpoint exactly what is driving this sentiment, there are a few interesting themes that I think are worth paying attention to:

  • Broad Relevance…I don’t think Citrix gets enough credit for the diversity they have built into their business. They have assembled legitimate offerings that span four segments, and more importantly four major secular themes including consumer/mobile, desktop virtualization, SaaS and cloud. I am not sure any other vendor in technology can weave a story that spans each of these domains with the relevance across each that Citrix has achieved. Citrix has built four standalone divisions that could easily exist on their own. More interesting, now you are seeing increased cross-pollination across these business units. This is as strong a portfolio approach as there is in enterprise technology right now.
  • Data Abstraction…The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) case study at the event stressed the importance of device independent IT management. The IT department there wants to alleviate any concern for device choices at the edge and allow for secure multi-domain access. How do you do this? You abstract the data and user profile from the device. This is where Citrix Receiver comes in. Citrix is messaging Receiver as a “front door to the enterprise”. The software (either in agent or browser format) essentially manages user profiles and related network controls. By controlling the enterprise profiles, and related data, Citrix can co-mingle personal and enterprise personalities without sacrificing security. The DIA commented that government issued iPad’s in their current form are essentially glorified document readers with all the functionality stripped out of them. With Receiver, because the actual data is never resident on the mobile device, the device is not nearly the liability it once was. Citrix allows the IT department to get out of the device tracking and recovery business. The goal is to be able to navigate in and out of secure networks and facilities and be 100% assured that no data is ever resident on that platform or leaves that facility. Receiver gets the DIA and others closer to this sort of reality.
  • Anything But VMware …Sure the Moscone Center was filled with Citrix partners and customers but generally it feels like people are not nearly as enamored with VMware as they once were. It is important to note that this sentiment isn’t as much about product as it is about market positioning. VMware’s seemingly monopolistic intentions are not going unnoticed. With the data center hypervisor battle conceded to VMware, attention has turned to desktop, mobile and cloud. Every OEM that missed out on owning VMware the first time around, seems destined to not let this happen again. As a result, I sense an ecosystem forming that will do whatever they can to enable “Anything-But-VMware” (ABV perhaps?). The PaaS layer, including CloudFoundry, is the next battleground. VMware’s effort here look like an aggressive move to capture the cloud operating system opportunity in the exact same manner they dominated the hyper-visor game. Only this time around, rather than charging for the abstraction layer, they are giving it away to accelerate adoption. At the same time they are aggressively building and acquiring applications to to fully monetize the PaaS foundation. Haven’t we seen this movie before? Is it any coincidence that three of VMware top four executives are former Microsoft? All things considered, there would seem to be a real opportunity for someone to step up with a viable alternative to VMware’s story. Citrix has as good a chance as anyone in this regard.

 

[Cross-posted at Wikibon Blog]


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