One part of the data management portion of the tech market that goes without as much recognition as the high-profile tools of cloud and other sectors is virtual access, though the companies involved in this industry are doing their best to make its utility more visible.

Jim Luna, senior director of Global Alliances and Business Development at Citrix Systems, Inc. , sat down to speak with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about Citrix’s approach to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), new developments in that field, customer reception and the importance of accessibility.

Working with Nutanix

Luna also highlighted Citrix’s changes in focusing on new products, noting, “Our networking business is growing quite strong.” He also talked about the growth within these products, stating, “We’ve had tremendous feature development in the past year.”

Luna added: “It’s tremendous reinvigoration in the product line and the product initiative,” citing Citrix’s “great relationship with Nutanix” as a key piece of growth enablement, especially as the integration of Machine Creation Services (MCS) with virtual desktops is being made easier through the use of Nutanix, Inc.’s services.

Luna identified one of Citrix’s main goals at this time as “[enabling] those VDI deployments more easily adopted in the marketplace,” and thereby expanding its customer base to new levels.

Keeping it simple for customers

“For mid-market companies that are looking to get started, that do not have the IT management expertise, that want to be able to deploy rather quickly and easily, that want to be able to manage that environment right, those are all the aspects that the solution provides, together with the technology and the software enablement that Nutanix provides with Prism,” Luna explained. “And being able to manage XenDesktop through that management console, making that environment easier for that end-user to adopt, deploy, manage and support,” Luna said.

Citrix has found the current interest, from a channel and the customer perspective, has been huge, and our channel partners are actually very receptive to working with Citrix to bring the solutions to market, Luna said. He noted that one of the biggest draws for customers was simply to keep implementation easy and hassle-free.

“A lot of the customers, especially here at the show, are interested in deploying VDI, and their first question is ‘how do I get started? What’s the easy button to get started?’,” Luna said. “And they’re usually looking at a small deployment… which I think it validates what we’re doing with VDI and the instant-on solution, in that the whole idea of that offering is to make that easier for the customer to adopt and scale.”

Assessing the turnout at the .NEXT Conference, Luna was excited about the attendees and their engagement with the presentations and representatives. “It’s great to see the momentum and excitement [at this show], the number of people that are here this year, and we can only expect this to grow and go even bigger in the next year,” he said.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE