Citrix vs GO-Global for MSPs
Introduction
Citrix® Systems was a pioneer in desktop virtualization and has built solutions to address virtualization, networking, and cloud computing challenges for decades. The company built its business chiefly through its partner channel, selling to primarily enterprise and medium-sized organizations.
Recent and fundamental changes at the company have made it difficult for some of its partner community to sustain a productive relationship with Citrix. In this post, we’ll review these changes, the consequences for Citrix MSP partners, and an emerging partner opportunity that can address the issues that MSPs face as a result of those changes.
Citrix is Acquired
On September 30, 2022, Citrix Systems was acquired by Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp. As part of the deal, Citrix became a private company and merged with TIBCO Software to form the Cloud Software Group (CSG). Citrix also spun off its re-branded Citrix ADC into NetScaler, which is also part of the Cloud Software Group.
In 2023, Citrix/CSG began making fundamental changes to the business: announcing modifications to its partner program on January 4th, and laying off approximately 2,000 Citrix employees on January 10th. The layoff included a significant number of staff focused on supporting channel partners and signaled a momentous change to Citrix’ “channel first” strategy.
Channel and Product Strategy Evolution
For most of its history, Citrix’ channel (versus a direct sales force) delivered the bulk of Citrix revenue. To support that model, Citrix invested significant amounts of personnel and money in its channel. Citrix partners of any size and tenure had direct access to training and marketing opportunities and the ability to directly interact with the Citrix channel team.
Now, CSG’s sales strategy is to directly focus on its top 1000 enterprise accounts, to provide direct access and assistance to top-tier partners and distributors, and to redirect small and medium-sized partners to those top-tier partners and distributors for technical and sales support. Unfortunately, some CSG top-tier partners and distributors don’t have the corporate infrastructure and staff in place to provide the level of support Citrix was able to deliver, eliminating small and medium-sized partners’ ability to provide prospects with (for example) timely quotes and their customers with timely technical support.
Additionally, Citrix had been consolidating its product line for years, driving XenApp®, Xen Server, and Xen Desktop® customers to adopt Citrix DaaS or Citrix VDI. CSG is accelerating that consolidation, focusing its sales and marketing efforts targeted to enterprise customers on Citrix DaaS and VDI and instructing its channel to do the same. CSG had also raised prices on its offerings. This product and pricing strategy aligns with CSG’s enterprise account sales strategy and the sales strategy of its top-tier partners and distributers. The end user computing needs of the enterprise align well with Citrix DaaS and VDI capabilities, and enterprise companies are less price-sensitive than small and medium-sized organizations.
But, for many of the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in the CSG channel delivering application hosting solutions using Citrix, replacing their current solution with CSG products like Citrix DaaS and VDI doesn’t make sense for an MSP from a functionality, complexity, and cost perspective.
Citrix DaaS and VDI have considerably more functionality than an MSP needs to host applications, so MSPs pay for features they will never need. That extended functionality makes implementation and management of Citrix DaaS and VDI more difficult and complex, cutting into MSP margins. Higher costs eat into MSP profitability and can drive new customers to a competitor. Finally, if an MSP does adopt Citrix DaaS and VDI, will the MSP get the high level of support from a CSG distributor that Citrix used to offer?
The MSP Conundrum
Can an MSP deliver reliable, cost-effective application hosting without Citrix?
Yes.
Here at GO-Global, we have seen an increase in inquiries and free trial downloads from MSPs looking for an alternative technology for application hosting that doesn’t kill their profitability.
They're looking for a solution like GO-Global.
Managed Service Providers, consider GO-Global® to host your Windows® application.
With GO-Global application publishing, Windows applications run on a server, which can be installed in any public, private, or hybrid cloud.
Applications published using GO-Global require far less IT implementation and management effort and scale more economically than Citrix DaaS and VDI. GO-Global leverages your cloud services’ existing infrastructure and security and scalability features to deliver advanced functionality with less complexity and lower cost.
Despite its low cost, GO-Global delivers enterprise-level scalability but is easy to install, configure, and use, and provides a great user experience, including fast logins and minimal latency, even over low-bandwidth connections. And GO-Global’s Universal Print Driver eliminates the printing issues that Citrix/CSG continues to struggle with.
Managed Service Providers that join GO-Global’s Premier Partner Program receive generous partner discounts, marketing resources, product training and support, and partner program support directly from the GO-Global team.
Learn more about the Partner Program here.
Request a demo here.
Download a free 30-day trial here.
