My first 100 days with Citrix

My first 100 days with Citrix

Neels du Plooy, Director of Channels and Alliances, Citrix Australia and New Zealand

The first 100 days in a new role, in a new company and building a new partner operating model that will support not only the growth of my new company but more importantly the growth of the partner ecosystem supporting our customers is, in my opinion, critical.

And, as I have reached this milestone, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the learnings and challenges of this first hundred days at Citrix. I have certainly learnt a lot, met with a lot of our partners and built a plan – outlining the strategies, structures and processes that I believe will re-energise our channel ecosystem. Bettering our ability to jointly support our customers as they tackle digital transformation, hybrid working, safe return to office and a myriad of other challenges that this pandemic and the reality of work has and will continue to throw at us.

I’m writing this piece, from my lockdown office – my kitchen table – mainly because its proximity to the distractions of the fridge, which is one of the many reasons I can’t wait to return to the office. And it’s staggering to think over half of my time at Citrix has been in lockdown, regardless, I’m proud to say that building relationships with our partners and customers has been at the centre of my focus and the planned success I have in mind for our channel operations.

In the relatively short time, I have been with Citrix I have had the honour of forging new working relationships with key existing Citrix partners, Global System Integrators and key alliances, as well as working with and developing bonds with new channel partners as we transform and innovate the Citrix solutions and offerings that we bring to market.

Whether it is working with @Logicalis to help healthcare provider Peninsula Health enable remote working and telehealth services during the height of the pandemic, or working with @Com-X to help education specialist CoreSenses transform digital learning environment, it’s been energising to facilitate large company transforms and there is so much more already in the works.?

We’ve worked with partners to accelerate cloud migration and help customers see the value it can bring to the workspace, and importantly how it can improve employee experience at a time when we find ourselves disconnected from the office, our colleagues and the routine of productive work.

It has been refreshing to share with partners and business leaders a passion for going beyond virtualisation, focusing on the Citrix of today, that empowers people to do their very best work, with a workspace experience where IT is more agile, apps and data are more secure and people are more productive.

Our channel and partner system is essential to our business. To drive more focus in our channel offering, globally we have revamped our incentives program to make benefits more predictable, increasing the partner role post sale, and packaging Citrix offerings to create end-to-end digital workspace services.? In Australia and New Zealand, I have re-energised the channel model, making an important transition to a state and territory-based channel model, aligning a local manager in every part of both nations. This has already started to improve collaboration, build more effective relationships and improve overall service to our partners and mutual customers.

So far this has been well received by our partners and Citrix team.

?What’s planned for the next 100 days and into 2022? Well, while the regional focus will help strengthen sales excellence and operational excellence with our long-term partners, it also gives us the bandwidth to find those new and upcoming partnerships that support customers as they invest in emerging technologies.

?We’ve already started strengthening our ties with long-term partners. This week we announced a key partnership with Nutanix to support the future of work in almost any cloud environment. The partnership will see Nutanix become a Citrix preferred choice for cloud deployments, while Citrix will become the preferred enterprise end-user computing solution on the Nutanix Cloud Platform.?

We’ll also be investing in innovation to give our partners better opportunities to engage with customers and solve larger-scale business problems and supporting them with the tools and resources they need to do this via our channel partner program.

But what we then ask of our partners, is they invest the time in understanding where Citrix is taking the workplace – moving beyond the traditional virtualised environments, to focus on cloud-delivered DaaS (desktop as a service) and better cater to the expectations of a hybrid cloud world. The future!

The future of work is evolving and is an incredibly exciting space to be in. Our partners have a great opportunity to build business by helping customers accelerate to the cloud and see the value it can bring into the workspace.

I’m excited to be part of this journey with our Citrix partners in Australia and New Zealand, and look forward to growing our channel presence in the region in 2022.?