As more organizations streamline operations to align with new enterprise cloud and datacenter technologies, key partnerships are forming to better enable that transformation. Nutanix Inc. and Citrix Systems Inc. are working together to align key product offerings to reduce the cost and complexity of app and desktop virtualization for their customers.

Christian Reilly, VP and CTO of the Workspace Services Division at Citrix Systems, joined Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Nutanix 2016 .NEXT Europe event, held in Vienna, Austria. They discussed Reilly’s view on the cloud and what he thinks customers and users are looking for, today, in services from Citrix Systems.

The search for simplicity with cloud

Miniman began by asking about Reilly’s insights into the cloud, as well as about Citrix’s enterprise expertise.

“I came from enterprise IT … when the cloud first came in, 2006 or 2007. We were just looking for a way to do IT better,” Reilly said. “It was a significant paradigm shift . … Over time, common sense prevailed — run the workload where it needs to be run, whether that’s public or private or hybrid,”

He went on to explain no matter what client he speaks to, no matter what industry, they have the same problem: They want to do more for less. Customers are seeking ways to embrace new paradigms and to do things bigger, better and faster. “What’s driving a lot of conversation is simplicity,” Reilly said.

How Citrix fits into apps

Miniman asked for details around how Citrix fits into apps and how workplace services works in the cloud. Reilly said that Citrix took a long, hard look at its existing technology to make sure it was getting a good return on R&D for that technology.

“We rationalized the portfolio and focused on what we call ‘the core,” he said. “In workspace services, it’s primarily made up of XenApp and desktop, XenMobile and XenServer. Then there’s the NetScaler business, which is a huge business in and of itself. And then there was the GoToMeeting business. We made a recent announcement to couple that business with LogMeIn. So what you’ve got now is WorkSpace services, which serves the core app delivery functions, and then the NetScaler business that is serving the service provider and the ADC [application delivery controller] market,” he explained.

Application delivery augmentation

Miniman asked about what’s new in the marketplace for Citrix. Reilly replied by talking about AI and language processing.

“When we think about this for the future, we’re looking at natural language processing and AI,” he said. He spoke of a couple of recent released videos for healthcare, where patients can talk to a virtual assistant who acts as a physician. He also explained that Citrix is currently seeking augment the application delivery it has today, as well as figure out what it means for the future.

*Disclosure: Nutanix Inc. and other companies sponsor some Nutanix 2016 .NEXT Europe segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Nutanix nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE