Citrix is building your workspace of the future

Citrix is a bit like the pachyderm in the proverb about the blind men and the elephant. How customers describe the company depends a lot on which of Citrix’s diverse products they touch. It’s a desktop and app virtualization company. It’s a networking company. A secure file sharing company, a mobility management firm.

Yes, Citrix is all of those and more, and CEO Kirill Tatarinov – one year after taking over from long-time leader Mark Templeton – is working to show how all those pieces play together in making Citrix the focal point of the ‘workspace of the future’ for nimble enterprises.

In this installment of the IDG CEO Interview Series, Tatarinov explained to IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant what that workspace of the future looks like and how he’s reshaping Citrix to get customers there. He also explored Citrix’s opportunities in the cloud and how the company is advancing the SD-WAN market. Tatarinov also talked about Citrix’s changing competitive landscape and made it clear he’s raring to take on big guns like VMware in a market being reshaped by virtualization.

You spoke with Network World’s Editor in Chief John Dix in April to explore your plans after taking over as CEO in January. I want to follow up on that. What are the key things you’ve accomplished since January?

There’s been a tremendous amount of learning and rediscovering a great company. We’ve focused our energy around three major vectors. One, of course, is strategy and vision, really being clear on who we are, where we’re heading and what’s our purpose. We’re establishing a very clear vision that we will power a world where people, organizations and things are securely connected and easily accessible. We will do it by executing our strategy of being the world’s best provider of integrated technology services with secure delivery of apps and data. Being clear on our purpose, our strategy, how we execute and how we deliver was very important, a dominant part of the first few months. Then, in May, we shared [our vision] with the world at our annual Synergy event. That’s one.

The second very important part was culture. As Peter Drucker famously said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Citrix had an amazing culture, a phenomenal culture, built over many years, a culture of trust, a culture of integrity. Citrix was known in the industry as the nice player, which was great. But there were certain elements missing that we needed to add to augment the great culture. Most importantly it’s the culture for learning, the aspect of curiosity, being more data driven. It’s the aspect of unity. We need to be one company.

Since Citrix grew through acquisitions for a number of years, more unity and more of a common set of processes and common ways to approach things was absolutely necessary and required. But beyond all that, what was somewhat missing is the edginess, adding the edge. We make our claims in the places where we’re the leader and we project ourselves the leader and we’re not afraid to compete and be more aggressive in places where we need to be aggressive. From the way we articulate our story, from the way we engage with customers and partners, all of that had to come into play. That was very important.

+ BACKGROUND: What’s going on at Citrix? +

Then, of course, it’s people. It’s meeting the company and engaging with employees around the world and a fairly significant percentage of my time has been spent on that. I’ve been to, I think, 11 Citrix offices around the world, all the major points of presence that we have I’ve been to in person, many of them more than once. I think it’s been across 10 different countries. It’s been quite a process of meeting people, learning and making sure people feel connected. There was a certain amount of vacuum that existed that we needed to fill and we needed to fill very quickly.

These are the three main vectors and I think we’ve made huge progress in all three. From the culture perspective and from the people engagement, we’ve just completed analysis of our global employee survey. The results are through the roof positive, also a clear sign of employee engagement that I frankly have not seen in any other organizations where I worked. More than 90% of our employees participated and provided feedback. You don’t see that. It’s usually in the 50s or 60s. If you get to the 70s you’re terrific.

From the business strategy point of view, we continuously hear from our customers and partners and that’s been great. But more important, a couple months ago we had our annual analyst event and that I would characterize as a group of people who are paid to criticize. There wasn’t a whole lot of critique in that meeting. There was pretty broad support as to what we’re articulating, how we’re positioning ourselves, how we’re projecting our strategy, our vision, our approach to the cloud, our approach to helping customers solve the major pain points that they have whether in cybersecurity or productivity gaps. It’s been great to see the resounding support for our renewed messaging and focus.

One thing that always struck me about Citrix is that it’s an East and West Coast company with corporate offices in Florida and in Silicon Valley. Is that going to change in order to unify the culture or the vision?

We’re a global company.

I understand that. But you actually cite both Santa Clara and Fort Lauderdale as your corporate HQ.

We’re a global company and getting access to talent and access to environments where great work and innovation happen is important. We’re headquartered in South Florida. We’re staying headquartered in South Florida. Lots of people asked me that question in my first six months. There are strong advantages of being there. It’s a great place to be and we’re staying there. At the same time, we have a very strong presence in Northern California and we’re absolutely staying there. We need to be connected with our partners. Lots of our partners are in Northern California and it’s a great place for innovative talent. We’re bicoastal. That’s absolutely correct.

But we’re much more than that. We have significant presence in Raleigh, N.C. That office is about 800 people. We have good presence in Redmond {Wash.}. Our work with Microsoft is very important to us and we continue to invest there. We have a fairly sizeable presence in China. We have about 350 people in Nanjing and it’s a great workplace for us and we have about 1,500 people in Bangalore {India}. We have a pretty sizeable operation in Cambridge, U.K. It’s really a global presence. Yes, it calls for a different approach and it calls for discipline and managing and being aware of multiple cultures but at the same time we get huge benefit by being present globally.

I want to go back to that mission statement. Citrix customers tend to know you based on what they buy from you – whether that’s desktop virtualization, mobility management, networking. I’m interested in terms of how you get people to understand the entirety of that mission statement and deepen your inroads with them.

Essentially, what we’re enabling our customers to do is help them work better and give them flexible, adaptable tools to get their work done. Think of it as a workspace of the future that we give them. We give them the ability to access their work from anywhere around the world. Depending on which device and which network they come from they get conditional access. They can provision an app or they get a virtual image of an app, their device is being managed, the connection they use to get to their work is being managed and all of that comes together. It’s workspace essentially. Workspace as a service you can call it. That’s the category that we want to lead and the category that we want to establish.

Explain workspace as a service because it’s a critical one and I want to make sure that the readers understand exactly what you mean.

Basically think of it as all of the tools and all of the mechanisms for you to access your work environment delivered in the cloud as a service. We’re offering Citrix Cloud that gives people the ability to access all the applications they need, all the tools they need, all the files they need and all of that in a secure, reliable, scalable fashion.

All about virtualization

I want to look at some of the key markets that you’re in today and drill down into them. For example, the desktop and application virtualization market. How do these change when you look at the larger trend of people shifting more of their applications into the cloud?

The actual network access, network gateway – whether it’s wide area network through software-defined optimization or whether it’s just your traditional gateway – becomes more important. Security is a key. Interestingly, there are many cases where whether an app is run in the cloud or run on-prem, the only way to secure a device is through virtualization. There are some extreme cases where there’s a regulated industry or just simply an environment where you don’t want anything placed on your device. The VDI, virtual client computing, becomes the only answer no matter where the app originates. There is no signature, there is no footprint. There is nothing physical on the endpoint. That plays a very important, very significant role.

For most customers, in the past, it was all in-house applications and the desktop view that you were encapsulating in that virtualized environment. Today, it’s a mix of your own and third-party apps and I want to be sure I understand how you create that virtual workspace in that kind of environment.

When you access your workspace, some of the applications that are published for you in that workspace may, in fact, be running in somebody else’s cloud. Citrix’s portal, StoreFront we call it, becomes a way for employees to access all the apps. Some of those apps may be running on premises, some may be virtualized, some may be running in another cloud. There are multiple clouds and Citrix StoreFront gives people a way to access it [all].

There’s another very interesting element of the SaaS apps that we see IT grappling with and that is the actual browser itself. In many cases we find that supporting different browsers and different versions of browsers is one of the most significant cost items and the cause for the majority of the helpdesk calls for internal IT. As part of Citrix XenApp, we enable browser virtualization, which means the browser itself is run in Citrix Cloud or in a private cloud of those companies.

Through that, the browser gets standardized so there is only one browser you support. Similarly, it goes for everything else like Skype for Business, for virtualized Skype for Business. This is one of the unique features that Citrix offers in the land of virtual client computing. Same reason; supporting different flavors of Skype for Business client is expensive. In regulated industries they are not allowed to be put on the device itself. They need to leave it on the server and we allow that.

+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Citrix wins virtual desktop interface shootout +

With concerns about security and compliance, is all this more relevant today than it was in the past?

The relevance of virtualization is growing quite significantly because of the security concerns. There has been a recent set of studies and reports published where clearly people realize that virtualizing an environment and not putting anything on the device itself in many cases is the only way to protect the device.

Mobility and networking

I also wanted to talk about the mobility management market. There’s a lot of competition there, so what do you view as your key differentiators.

Mobility management you can parse into two categories: mobile device management and mobile application management. Mobile device management is rapidly becoming a commodity and there are a broad range of players that are offering technologies, including device vendors themselves, and that is not an interesting market to be in.

In mobile application management we have real differentiators. It’s essentially playing to the trend of BYOD where most organizations today not only allow people to bring their own devices to work but don’t provision corporate devices. They assume that people will be bringing their own devices. Enabling someone to own the device and manage the device itself but at the same time have corporate IT manage mission-critical assets on the device is a huge need. That’s precisely what we offer with XenMobile, getting truly secure so you’re not afraid that your corporate assets will walk away if you decide to put them on the device.

Of course, you can always deliver them virtualized, which we also support and having the two together makes a whole lot of sense. But you can put them on the device, whether it’s sensitive files or email content or anything else, then open up a VPN channel on a per application basis so the device itself is not enrolled. There’s no VPN for the device but there is a VPN channel established on a per-app basis. A combination of NetScaler and XenMobile enables this.

Another very interesting differentiator that we’re now starting to see coming into demand in our conversations with clients actually comes through our very deep partnership with Microsoft. What we announced in May and what we will be introducing in the next couple months is a connection between Citrix and Microsoft mobility management technology. The two are better together and that becomes the obvious choice for all Microsoft customers that use Microsoft’s mobility management.

I want to talk about the networking piece of your business. Again, the same question; what do you see as the key differentiators there? What does Citrix bring to the table that you want to make sure people understand?

Citrix NetScaler has some unique characteristics which all stem from one important differentiator: We are truly software defined, which means our networking technology can exist in a broad range of form factors. It can run as a large high-powered appliance, it can run on a bare metal server, it can run in a virtual environment or it can run in the cloud. That gives us tremendous ability.

[ MORE ON CITRIX: Citrix: What kind of company is it anyway? ]

We focus on three major segments of the networking industry. First and foremost – and the largest – is ADC, application delivery control. That is a very significant play for us in strategic service providers, cloud providers. We also deliver cloud services at scale. We see a very significant part of our business also coming from the enterprise. The two, interestingly, balance each other. As more and more workloads move to the cloud and more SaaS applications are being deployed, being a provider of networking technology to cloud providers plays out quite significantly. And of course hybrid is a fact of life for most IT organizations.

We entered the market of SD-WAN that is a new wave of wide area network optimization technologies yet again through our pure software-defined approach. We have some unique technology that allows for increased resiliency of the network close to real time. There’s nothing in real time but close to real time. In demonstrations with NetScaler SD-WAN where you are on a Skype for Business call and during the call the wire gets cut, our technology automatically reroutes the traffic to a secondary network, most frequently in that situation it will be 4G wireless, and you don’t notice anything during the call. It is so close to real time that there is not even a glitch in the video conversation.

Think about the need for this network resiliency; it’s not only about cost. Of course, cost savings are significant but it’s resiliency of the network. Every company that runs branches at scale and runs mission-critical applications at the branches needs resiliency. And last but not least, also a recent entry for us, is in management and analytics. NetScaler has full visibility in networking layers 4-7 so we get to see a lot. We now are enabling network and IT professionals to analyze the patterns, the traffic, what’s happening on the wire and reconfigure their environment based on what they see.

Competing or complementary

When you talk about it being a pure software-defined approach, is it equivalent to, for example, a VMware NSX software-only strategy. Is it complementary to the software-defined networking initiatives that a Cisco or an HPE or other network companies are developing?

NSX is in a different segment but when you think of SD-WAN and ADC, that’s the approach we’re taking.

I guess I’m just trying to understand. If I’m already a Cisco, Juniper, Arista or Hewlett Packard Enterprise customer in networking are you complementary to what I already have or are you trying to displace something in those environments?

In most cases we’re complementary. We have a pretty close partnership with Cisco on ADC in particular. We’re obviously working very closely with HPE and all of those vendors. Similarly, on SD-WAN, while there is some competition from some traditional vendors and some upstarts, for the most part it’s complementary.

The SD-WAN market is interesting. How do you see that evolving?

IDC certainly predicts very rapid growth in the market and we see very significant demand from organizations of all sizes. We don’t see demand being ignited by the cost saving considerations. The demand is ignited by resiliency and reliability considerations. It’s optimizing so that your pipe into the branch does not go down. That’s what people want and that’s what NetScaler is doing and keeps doing.

I also wanted to talk about the file sharing market and your ShareFile product. What problems are you solving here for customers?

Secure access to files and secure synchronization of files for business, for organizations of all sizes. ShareFile started in SMB and that’s still the largest part of the business. Citrix ShareFile is growing very rapidly.

What competitive products would I compare it with?

There is a broad range of commodity storage, just a way for you to store data.

You’re talking about Box or Dropbox or things like that?

That’s the category but the places where ShareFile differentiates is it’s built for business. It has built-in workflows, it has workflows that are built for particular verticals like accounting, legal, healthcare. All of those workflows and support for unique file types are baked into the product. It has an option for you to deploy your files on-premise. You can basically set up zones that you can put on-premise. It will still be orchestrated from the cloud, it is born-in-the-cloud technology but we do support on-prem options for those who want to have hybrid IT and for those who need that.

How does this fit in with the virtual desktop environment that you explained early on?

There is no app without data so ShareFile provides data. ShareFile provides application data in that same construct, in that same storefront.

Going back to our April interview, you were asked about your competitive set. Specifically, John asked you about VMware and one of the things you said was: “VMware has made a lot of claims, some true, some not”. What did you mean by that?

VMware over the years succeeded in creating an image that is bigger than what the reality is, in particular, in virtual cloud computing. Citrix is the unrivaled leader in that segment with over 45% market share.

I want to make sure I understand what segment you mean.

Virtual cloud computing is VDI, it’s virtual desktop and virtual app essentially. The last I looked, VMware’s share in that segment is somewhere around 15% and yet they succeeded in making claims that they are the leader in that segment which we found laughable. In the past, Citrix chose not to correct it and we’re absolutely correcting it now.

Was that it?

There’s a broad range of other things, in functionality and types of relationships that they have with Microsoft and there’s a long list.

I guess this touches on the next question. You also said in that interview, to some Citrix “has been soft in our approach to competition.” You touched on this at the beginning of this interview. What did you mean by that and how are you changing it?

Well, it’s a cultural transformation where we are working with our global team and our partners and being absolutely clear with them that we should not lose. We have better technology now. It’s been proven time and time again and there’s no reason for you to lose. Our competitors are known to discount their products at times to zero and sometimes we are going to choose not to match that because we know that those customers will eventually come back to us.

That’s not a very good customer anyway.

Right. Well, it’s the whole enterprise agreement that most large vendors play in, but it’s a cultural transformation. It’s being clear that we are the leader, we should not lose and we need to stake our claims and stay true to our strategy and our direction and don’t waver.

When you talk about that cultural change, is it becoming a more sales driven organization versus engineering led?

Citrix has always been a technology company. Reigniting those innovation engines is an important part of that transformation. It’s OK to acquire when you find an interesting acquisition target but let’s make no mistake. We’re in business because we’re a technology provider and innovating and building new products, new technologies, new capabilities is the number one thing that will differentiate us. Making the culture stronger and being clear who we are from the engineering side has been a very important part of this transformation.

A lot has been done with hackathons, with internal tech fairs, with bubbling up all the great work, all the great grassroots work and celebrating our success on the engineering side. Also, connecting the dots and making sure it’s the whole of Citrix that we position with our customers, not piecemeal. In the past, this was a bit of a problem. We’re now much more united than we’ve ever been. To your point, it is a somewhat different sales culture. I wouldn’t be afraid to use the word aggressive. We have to train our people and tell our people to be more aggressive.

How is the messaging and marketing going to change so that people see what you’re driving at here and understand the totality of what Citrix offers?

We’ve been running our advertising campaign, our awareness campaign, since May. We’re getting some good results. We know that we need to do more. What I found was that there is a whole lot more to Citrix than the world knows about and continuing to explain it and continuing to put our message out will be hugely important. The best way for us to do it, and the aspect of our marketing that works the best, is having our customers tell our story through their use cases. That’s been amazing. The biggest asset at Citrix is 400,000+ organizations that start their day with Citrix and end their day with Citrix. It’s truly a mission-critical platform for them and more and more of them are willing and eager to tell our story.

What’s ahead for the coming year?

There’s a lot in store from the product side and we have an amazing roadmap for the next 12 months. Our engineering team is in this mode of continuous engineering. That’s the No.1 thing that gets me excited.

What are the areas that you’re investing most in?

Analytics and bringing intelligence is certainly one aspect that is going to be dominant through everything that we do. Also, bringing out more security capabilities. That’s going to be a very significant theme for all of our engineering teams. Working closer with our partner ecosystem. When we look at next year, the term that we use with our own people is to reinvigorate our partner channel.

We understand that Citrix is a tools vendor and we exist in the world of broad ecosystems, ecosystems being Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Amazon, HP Enterprise. Being very clear on how we play in the world of those ecosystems and investing in very targeted, focused integrations in supporting those platforms will be a very important theme going into the future.

Last but not least, think of it as workspace of the future enabled by Internet of Things, enabled by the fact that pretty much anything and everything around us increasingly gets some compute capacity and internet connectivity and the amazing things that you can do with that at the workspace.

Is there a way to make the Citrix footprint light enough that you can virtualize and bring your capabilities to bear in the Internet of Things environment?

One thing that we’re doing related to that is working with some of our partners, ViewSonic being one of them, to put Citrix capability on Raspberry Pi. Essentially, Citrix is being delivered on a chip, a Citrix receiver, which enables a Raspberry Pi device to be fully connected to the rest of the enterprise environment. That opens up tremendous thin client opportunity where you basically get your thin client for under $100, Citrix full radio on it. It’s ready to run all of your apps. It’s ready to support whatever devices you connect to that.