(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia it's theCUBE, covering Citrix Synergy Atlanta 2019. Brought to you by Citrix. Welcome to theCUBE, our first day of covering Citrix Synergy 2019 from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm Lisa Martin, my co-host for the next two days is Keith Townsend. And fresh from the keynote stage we're pleased to welcome David Henshall President and CEO of Citrix. David welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So, Keith and I were both saying in our intro how excited we are to be here. The keynote was fantastic this morning, a lot of news. One of the things that I really liked that you started off acknowledging in the last year, since Synergy 2018, you've never delivered products faster. You guys are delivering across workspace, networking, analytics, this is a different Citrix. Tell us about this. >> It's very different, in fact, we've transformed the whole company, in a number of different dimensions, to make this possible. I mean, we've reorganized from a number of business units into a functional team. We brought in leadership to really drive end-to-end engineering products and many functions because the idea was moving from building individual point products to building really complete, integrated solutions for our customers. The benefit of that is that it's allowed us to go a lot faster. So, we're developing products today at a pace that's probably two or 3X what it was just a couple of years ago and we're doing it with higher quality, higher integration and overall just an eye from working backwards from what the customers need. So, I'm really happy with the pace we've seen in the company. >> Well David, you threw out a big number out there, $7,000,000,000,000 in wasted time. If you look at a $1,000,000,000 problem, that's a big problem. You look at a $7,000,000,000,000 problem as you guys did your research and looked at the data what was the logical reaction? Was it, you know what, we can play in our little space of network, security and presentation or dive into this deep business challenge of solving problems. How did you guys get there? >> The first step, actually, was nobody believed that it was a $7,000,000,000,000 problem. So, once we really understood the research and started to look at, what are the factors contributing to this broad, let's call it, disengagement, epidemic that's going on around the world, look at some of the factors that are really driving this. We've talked earlier today about most people, when they think about employee engagement and employee experience, they tend to look at traditional management factors. Things like their workplace environment, their manager, their hours and they forget to look at technology. The fact that technology, as rapidly as it's advanced around the world, has not made people's lives better in certain cases. In companies, you know, businesses assume that everybody's a power user and so you know the ins and outs of every single application. They assume that you understand the workflows of working through all of these moving parts, versus what are you really trying to get done. So, we're working backwards from understanding the steps that people need to just get their jobs done. The whole idea, frankly, is that people want to do great work. Across any industry, in any discipline. You got to give them the tools and the services to do that, because if not, it's just frustrating, it's work. And that's what's leading to this broad disengagement challenge that we've seen around the world. We think we can be part of solving that. >> One of the stats you mentioned this morning that really caught my eye, was you mentioned power users. You said, enterprise software is really designed for power users, which is 1% of the folks that are engaging with software. You also said, employees and I think we're all in this bucket, we're, on average, using seven to 10 apps per day. There's so much distraction. I loved a video that you showed this morning looking at Maria. the Senior Marketing Manager, just giving a glimpse into an enterprise day in, the life of. And going, wow, for the first 10 minutes of their day this person who wants to design and deliver killer marketing campaigns is bogged down with all these other distractions. I got to go check this app, oh, and this one, oh, and this one, oh, and this one. And, wait a minute, probably, you know, 10 minutes. How many times a day does that happen? And that productivity starts to go way down as does, probably, frustration. It's exciting to hear how Citrix is going to help your customers, really, tackle that problem. Because, at the end of the day, there are a ton of devices, what 65 billion interconnected devices in the next few years alone. And there are worker shortages. But, one of the things that can drive attrition is having a workflow that is really suboptimal. >> Absolutely, I mean, we look across all of these big challenges, there's just not enough people with the right skills in the right locations. There's a global war for talent. Really, just trying to attract the best and the brightest. When companies find these great people what do you do to make them productive? What do you do to make them engaged? And that's what drives retention. Our idea here is basically, remove and abstract away a lot of the complexity that is getting in the way of that engagement, just like Maria that you mentioned. She wants to build awesome marketing programs but the company has given her tools and systems where she's basically become a repetitive task worker over and over again. And that's what's leading to a lot of this disengagement problem that we talked about. So, we think that there's ways to eliminate that. Too much app usage, you know, too little functionality that's being deployed. And frankly, this context switching. My favorite stat on context switching is, you think about today, we're interrupted every two minutes. With like, a tweet, a notification, an email a phone call, you name it, every two minutes. And yet, it takes the average person 20 minutes to get back to what they were doing in the first place. Because the human mind just isn't wired for multitasking. People think it is, but the research shows that it's really not. So, I think we can make a huge difference by simplifying a lot of that and just making it in our words, easier for people to do great work on their terms. >> So, David, when we think of these digital transformations we think of huge SIs, management consultant companies that come in, help to re-platform applications. You guys gave some pretty, I think ambitious, concepts of taking data from an AS/400, extracting that and combined it, particularly, with Salesforce data. And then answering a simple question of did the deal close? When I think of these type of transformations I think of years of work, years of investment. I think of these other SIs. What is the future of work, when it comes to Citrix as a verb? Today, Citrix as a verb means, I can get to my applications remotely. When it comes to this type of transformation how do you view the definition of Citrix as a verb changing? >> It's an interesting question. I think that today, as you said, Citrix is about how do I remote into my applications. We've been doing that for 30 years now. I'd argue we do it better than anybody in the world. And we've pioneered new markets like app virtualization and BDI and app delivery to make that possible. Next generation of the Citrix workspace is about creating that platform for how work gets done. And do it in a way that can help guide people through their day and simplify and automate a lot of those common tasks. I think, hopefully, there's an opportunity to use Citrix as the word for how work gets done. It's like, did you take care of that yet? Yep, I Citrix'd it., We've just become very synonymous with a better way to drive work, therefore, higher productivity, higher engagement, better user experience. And we absolutely believe that's possible. That's what we're delivering inside the Citrix workspace. >> A couple things that jumped out at me, as a marketer, that we hear a lot. I've done a lot of customer marketing programs and so we talk about driving customer lifetime value. We talk about delighting customers. You guys talk about that with respect to the employee, the employee experience, delighting the employees. You did some things today with Citrix Workspace, intelligent enterprise. New capabilities like micro apps and virtual assistant. How are those capabilities, one, helping to differentiate Citrix and two, helping to increase the employee lifetime value and deliver awesome employee experiences. >> No, it's it's a great question. In fact, a lot of people in our industry talk about the end-user as a user, versus a human being that's really trying to accomplish something. I've said before that people are not workloads. People are humans that are really just trying to make a difference day in and day out. So when we think about the customer, every customer wants to deliver amazing experiences for their teams because that's how they make them more productive. That's how they drive their own business results forward. I looked at, actually talked about, in the keynote some really cool results of looking at those companies that had the most advanced either, digital transformation projects or most advanced digital workspace projects and the results are staggering. It's like, 20% higher productivity, higher customer sat, higher growth, higher profitability, just across the board. It shows that the outcomes for those that really embrace these concepts can dramatically transform their businesses. I think that's what we're trying to drive forward. Make it easier for these companies to make that happen. >> We always say that you never get rid of complexity, you move it. Citrix is renowned for their CTP community. Super dedicated evangelists around making the technology consumable. As you continue to forge partnerships with cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, you reduce the complexity of the backend products. Tell us about the role of, I think a good majority of the attendees here, the administrators the systems engineers, the architects, how do you see those roles morphing so that companies can achieve these outcomes? >> The idea is really, giving back to the administrator in a lot of ways, so that they can focus on the projects that they really want to drive. I mean, everybody wants to drive digital transformation. They want their business to go be more effective, be more nimble, more profitable. They're bogged down. I mean, it's the old story about run versus grow. If the typical IT budget today is about 90% spent on just maintaining the core infrastructure that's just a tiny, little bit left over for innovation. If we can help simplify that, we'll give them more let's call it more time, more money, more flexibility, to go drive change for their own businesses. And that's really what they want to do. Great partners, like our Citrix CTPs that you mentioned, spent time with those guys yesterday. It's awesome because they can be on the front lines of leading this change. Helping customers understand the realm of the possible. What they can drive going forward and carry that message out there. Because this is truly applicable in every industry, every geography and really, every size business today. >> Connecting people, making the work, the employee experience, just so much more seamless. Taking out a lot of friction, boosting productivity, giving people back a day a week, all of it. Yes, yes, yes. Of course, people are the biggest security threat. Just by nature of, we need to get things done as quickly as possible. What is Citrix doing to help the IT folks ensure that all of these connected conversations are done securely? >> The great thing about Citrix for all these years is that most of our customers look at us as an integral part of their overall security story. One of the most secure ways to deliver an application is to virtualize it. So what we've done is leverage those 30 years of learnings to really deliver, now a platform, for all users, all application types and really all scenarios. So, we can add a lot of the same benefits to non-virtualized use cases, that we've done for all of these years. Providing much more insight into how and when people use technologies. Conditional access and conditional security policies to be able to layer on top. So that as people move through their day, different scenarios, different devices, different networks, we can contextually apply those policies to help people just have a much more secure experience overall. One tailored to what they want to drive for their business. So, I think it's just one example of what we're doing to make security just integral to the overall story. >> Well David, when you tackle a $7,000,000,000,000 problem the audience changes. You're not just talking to system administrators. Citrix is getting to take a seat at the table with the CIO, because you're driving direct value. When I think of automation and now we're bringing in security into the conversation. The first thing I think about is, man, I can move faster but I can move faster doing the wrong thing. Talk to me about how Citrix is going to help customers do things faster, but do them things faster in a secure manner and tackling the right things. I can spend a lot of time automating a process that really shouldn't be automated yet. >> Absolutely. One of the big investments we've been making over the last couple of years is, in both pre-sales teams, as well as teams around customer success. We want to make sure that we can provide as much architectural guidance and know-how about the best way and maybe the best prioritization to tackle a lot of these problems. We're doing that both inside Citrix and we're extending that out to our partner community to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to take that knowledge and help customers, pretty much across every industry and every geo. And that's going to be one of the big things. As we continue to transform from, what I think of as a transactional business which is the way most enterprise software companies have been over the year, to really a service-oriented model. Where it's a continuous engagement and you're proving your value every single day. That changes the entire company. And that means the way we build products, support customers and deliver new capabilities over time. That's part of the journey we're on inside of the company. We talk about it every, pretty much, every day. I expect us to be on this journey for several years. I'm just really happy with the progress we've made up to this point. >> So David, last question, speaking of partners. One of the things that you also started off your keynote with is talking about how Citrix has really invested in this great ecosystem of partners over the last 12 months. We saw some exciting news announced with Microsoft and what you guys are doing with Office 365, Microsoft Teams, tell us a little bit about that. >> Well, in general, I mean we've always been about partnering. People have talked about Citrix is almost a Switzerland approach over these. Because we can help bridge a lot of these ecosystems. Because customers, in general, they really just want choice in the infrastructure. And they recognize that their environment may have major portfolios of Microsoft technologies, Google technologies, Amazon technologies. And then a whole host of other service providers along the way. We can sit, uniquely, at the middle of all this, really helping bridge those different ecosystems. Because, at the end of the day, the idea is about how do we create choice in the way you manage and run your infrastructure. Recognizing the fact that it does change over time. And then, choice on the endpoints. So you can use the device of of your choice to get your work done. And that idea really permeates everything that we're doing right now. A lot of great examples today. Innovation with both Microsoft and Google, having them both on stage talking about all the work we're doing collectively. Those partnerships go back many, many, many years and so we're just going to keep pushing it forward. >> I'm going to squeeze one more question in. Because you've been at Citrix, you said this is your 17th Synergy. Digital transformation, critical, but cultural transformation is essential to that. Just, in the last few seconds or so, your perspectives on the cultural innovation and change that Citrix that has delivered. >> Citrix has always been a company that has a wonderful culture, I didn't invent the culture. My job is to nurture it and carry it forward and help train people on why culture matters. Culture, in our mind, is not just about the traditional factors of how we operate internally. But, really, more about how we think about empathy from a customer point of view. You walk a day in somebody else's shoes and work backwards and it gives you a lot more insight into the types of problems we're trying to solve, the types of software we build and then, of course, how we service and support downstream. Culture is one of the things that I think really sets us apart in the industry. There's a lot of people that are joining us here at this event. We had a record audience this year and I think a lot of that is because we're the kind of kind of company that they want to partner with. We'll be there as their environments change and as their technologies change, that's culture in my mind. >> Awesome. Well David, thank you so much again, for joining Keith and me on theCUBE this morning. Having theCUBE at Synergy for the first time in eight years, we are so excited for uncovering some great things for the next few days and seeing how your customers are Citrixing it. >> Welcome back, it's great to have you guys. >> It's our pleasure. >> Thank you. >> For Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from Atlanta, Georgia Citrix Synergy 2019, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)