>>Hi, welcome to this cube conversation. I'm Lisa Martin and pleased to welcome back. One of our cube alumni, Christian rowdy, the VP of technology strategy at Citrix Christian. Welcome back to the program. >>Thank you, Lisa. And thanks for having me. Great to see you again, and we'll be virtually at this time. >>Great to see you too. It's been a couple of years and quite a few things have changed since we got to sit down at synergy a couple of years together together. Citrix has an exciting new announcement. Let's unpack that. Talk me to me about what you're announcing and what it's going to deliver. >>Sure. You know, as you said, actually, I can't believe it's been a couple of years since we last saw each other. And I think, you know, time's kind of just disappeared within the pandemic. So it actually, as a result of some of those things that we've seen, you know, people get so tired of being stuck in the same place and tired of being on this constant stream of video. And one of the things that we wanted to do was, was actually a vital Citrix launch part, which is kind of our new announcement series that will be delivered via LinkedIn live. But he's really intended to be kind of a short burst approach to providing updates to some of them really important things that we're working on at Citrix. So, uh, hopefully, uh, people would love to say a reason and get some rich information from them. >>And there's going to be a series of three launchpad programs. Now we've seen so much change since the rapid pivot to work from home. Now this worked from anywhere hybrid environment. We've seen the, the massive adoption of cloud and SAS. We've also seen the threat landscape, the attack surface, just expand and expand. Talk to me about why Citrix is doing the launch pad series and then we'll go through each of the three series. >>Yeah, absolutely. So maybe I think just to set a little bit of context, you know, we, we were working on some pretty interesting things, uh, pre pandemic, you know, uh, as a result of the, kind of the, the evolution of Citrix as an organization, but perhaps more importantly, the journey that our customers were on globally, you know, every customer that we had in, in any industry across the world, we're all at various stages of their own digital transformation. And I think what the pandemic has done apart from all the really bad things, actually, if you look at it as a, perhaps one gleaming bit of light in the whole thing was that we've given organizations, whether we realize it or not the opportunity to try this huge remote work experiment. And I think what it has done above anything else has shown that remote work actually works. >>And so as a result of that, what we've seen coming out of the pandemic is that organizations are really going to use that as a springboard. So implement some new strategies, new technologies, and really drive the next generation of that business. So with one eye on that, I think if you were to categorize the three big things that we're looking at from a Citrix perspective, it's really about how to help, we'll continue to help our customers with that accelerated it modernization to really help them understand what it takes to have secure, flexible work in this new post pandemic world. And then also to think about productivity, what does productivity mean in a world of ever more distributed teams? And so the events that we're talking about and specifically the cloud one, we'll focus on some of the new offerings from Citrix, some of the new technologies and talk about the trends that we've seen within our customers. >>So, you know, one of the big things that Citrix has always been very proud of is our market leading position in virtual application and virtual desktop delivery. And even that itself has now begun to emerge into what we call desktop as a service. And there's a ton of new innovations that we've been working on in that space as well. But also if you think about what's happening in cloud, as you talked about, you know, the evolution of applications being from traditional on premises, wills to SAS applications, what we're also seeing is things like the network services that use to support those applications when they looked slightly different, which from a deployment perspective, and now all moving to cloud services, the security that you alluded to in terms of how complicated that is, but how important it is for it, organizations, those services also moving to cloud as the applications begin to look very differently in the future. So extremely excited about the cloud launch. Patino, we're going to talk a lot about those things that we're doing both in the public cloud, in the hybrid cloud. And I think it will resonate well with customers around the world. >>I think it will as well. And you mentioned there are glimmers of hope that we've seen in the last 18 months. And one of the things that this has proved is that work from home can be productive, can be successful. Employees need to be empowered to be able to do that. Let's go ahead and talk through the first, um, program accelerating it monetization. This is Tuesday, September 28th. Let's talk about some of the, of the Citrix innovations that you're going to be announcing. >>Yeah, so I mean, as I mentioned know, we, we, we think about sort of ecstatic. I see modernization in various parts. You know, we tend to start with the classic infrastructure and we've seen over the years that lots of infrastructure, you know, he's leaving the building. And by that we mean the traditional realms of on-premise data centers or co-location facilities, this constant evolution and migration of those services, uh, to, to infrastructure as a service providers from the huge cloud companies that are out there. And we can continue to see that as a, as a huge trend. Of course. Um, one of the things that off the back of that of course is our move from the traditional world of virtual desktops, which was a very on-premise concept into desktop as a service. So really the key around desktop as a service, it's a simplification, some cost optimization and the things that it are looking at in terms of how they can really bring things to the party for their organizations going forward. >>And of course, as we move into that world of everything being delivered as a service know, things like network services, security services, they almost follow. So some of the things that you'll hear about that is really around our application, delivering security and also our move from VDI to DAS. And, you know, you'll hear a lot about what we're doing with the world's leading cloud providers to really add more Citrix value or build on what we've already done with them, but lots, lots more, uh, and really support the, the, the notion of the, every customer is on a journey to cloud one way or the other. And of course, districts will be ready to help at any stage of that journey. >>Every customer is on the journey to cloud. And we've seen that accelerate so much in the last 18 months. Talk to me a little bit about if we, if we think of desktop as a service, as an evolution of VDI, is that what you're saying? >>Yeah. You know, you think about sort of the traditional VDI scenario was that your virtual desktops, where we were using instead of physical desktops, you know, in inside the usual office location, but during the pandemic, you know, we saw so many customers rely on moving to VDI, to cloud, for reasons of scalability and reasons of security, but then also needing to still in many cases, provide access to those sort of traditional physical PCs. And of course, Citrix has had solutions for that for fundamentally many, many years. Um, but what we're also seeing is that organizations are striving for simplicity. You know, the kind of the value of the desktop is being able to deliver it on demand to the end user securely from wherever they are in the world on whatever device they're on. And as we see this sort of establishment of these new working norms, and I'm not a great fan of the phrase, the new normal, I think we have a new now and that now will evolve. You know, they almost daily as we come through the other side of the pandemic. So the real key drivers for us there obviously flexibility, reliability, security, and also cost optimization, which of course is the bread and butter of most conversations we have with CIO and CTO is around the world. >>That's critical. And I'm going to borrow that, um, the new, now, if you don't mind, I'll cite you credit. But I like that. I agree that I hope this is not the new normal, but one of the things that we've seen in the new now on the security front is we've seen this massive increase in ransomware. Everybody went to work from home almost overnight. Suddenly you have millions of devices, IOT devices connecting to corporate networks. Security became the acceleration of security, became a huge challenge for customers in any organization globally. Let's talk about now the second announcement. This is going to be Tuesday, October 5th, empowering a secure distributed workforce. >>Yeah. And I, and I think you you've hit the nail on the head there. I think the one thing that was perhaps completely staggering to everybody was the speed in which organizations were forced to lock their employees out of the physical office locations and by force. I mean, for all the right reasons that are around the health and wellbeing. I mean, if I think back to my earlier career, you know, before I joined Citrix, I was in a large organization and we would, you know, perform these fire drills every so often where we would go through our disaster recovery business continuity plans and really play scenarios out. Like the office in London was unavailable or the office in LA was unavailable, but never once do I remember is doing every office. And every location is offline from tomorrow. And there's no negotiability. If you have a device at home, please use it. >>You know, we can't provide laptops quick enough, especially with the global chip shortage now as well. So whatever device you have, we'll do our best to, to make that secure. And I think there was, uh, an expectation that the employees would sort of play nicely in that scenario. But of course, you know, if you have your home device, you probably don't update it as much as a work device. So it really does require a new set of thinking. And of course, Citrix has been at the forefront of the zero trust evolution. Now the technologies that we have in place do permit remote work and have them for many years. But I think what we're seeing now is a slightly different type of remote work, you know, with different types of, of applications and devices, as you said, different locations, you know, needing to knit all of that together in a sort of a more contextual way so that we can understand, you know, combinations of the end user, their location, the types of applications that they're using the state of their devices, and sort of bring it all that together to really understand, you know, just exactly how much security needs to be applied. >>I think the traditional challenges are still there, you know, too much security and end users will find a way around it because it's not a good user experience. And, you know, perhaps too much user experience without the security leaves, big holes and big problems for organizations. So, yeah, I think this balancing act is really key. And of course, uh, as we go through the launch funnel security, we'll talk about some of the great innovations and solutions that are coming from central. >>You're right with the fact that, uh, you know, this rapid pivot security, the changes, the things that people are saying, the workforce needs to be empowered. You know, we saw this sudden dependence on all these SAS applications to communicate and to collaborate. We also saw with that rapid PennDOT to work from home ransomware, I was doing some research recently, Christian, and that's it, it's up almost 11 X just in the first half of 2021 DDoSs is massively up. People are, are working from home in environments that are just suddenly a bit chaotic. And it's challenging from a security perspective when you have so many distractions to be able to make sure that you're following all the right steps as an employee, um, that you're not clicking on nefarious links and that you're really doing your own due diligence. So having that zero trust and help from folks like Citrix is really key to this new. Now, as you say, >>It is, you know, the unfortunate thing is that wildlife, uh, no end user, or certainly I would hope that no one user would willingly cause a problem from a security perspective. I think just by the very nature of the way that end users thing, can they interact with links in emails or the, uh, you know, interact with attachments in emails? Unfortunately, relying on the human is always going to be the weakest link in the chain. And I think that's why we have to have new approaches to how we address the use of behavior. You know, can we actually, uh, you know, guide people in different ways. There are plenty of technologies that are out there now. And then many, many from Citrix that actually allow us to what we've lovingly said is, is to save the users from themselves. You know, we can't simply rely on every user to be diligent for every single email or every single link that they see. So, you know, being able to actually understand, you know, where the threats are as it relates to the end user and the likely interaction they have, and then being able to combat those threats in the technology at a seamless way is really part of the excited evolution of, of what we're doing with Citrix. And again, lots of great things to come as we go through the security. >>And the third announcement is around worker boosting worker productivity. That's been a challenge that we've all faced in the last 18 months of having, like I said, a minute ago, you know, people that have suddenly kids learning from home spouses, working people competing for bandwidth. Talk to me about some of the things that Citrix is doing to help those workers be more engaged, be plugged in and really be able to get their jobs done from anywhere. >>Yeah, well, you know, I mean, I can give you the benefit of my experience, you know, being, uh, in a, in a home office for, for, for almost 20 months has been completely the antithesis of the opposite of the rest of my career. You know, I've, I've always been very mobile, um, you know, kind of picking up different devices and using them for different things, just purely from a, you know, the perspective of what's most convenient to me. And I think, you know, if you take that and extrapolate it to, to every employee and every organization around the world who has had to invite work into their home, you know, and another soundbite that I use quite often now is that, you know, for the last 20 months, we really haven't been working from home. We've been living at work, you know, and, and, and it's, it's a fact, you know, we've probably done more hours than ever before. >>We've run the risk of burnout more than ever before. And, you know, prior to the pandemic, I know, talked to you and I talked about this very thing, uh, at synergy, you know, w we talked about the notion of needing to focus on employee experience and employee productivity. You know, we saw plenty of examples in customers with huge initiatives around employee experience and employee productivity. You know, CIO is partnering with HR leads and really trying to figure out a map, the employee journey, you know, what is it that they do every day? You know, how can we make their life easier? And perhaps interestingly, how can we reduce some of the mundane overhead, you know, approvals or requests or things that we see in our everyday life, but actually give the employees more time to be valuable and, and do great cognitive work, which is of course, what, what humans do best. >>And so, you know, you remember, we talked about the micro apps back then. We, we we'd completed the acquisition of Sappho, uh, as you and I talked last time when we unveiled micro apps and micro workflows, as a way to really help end users interact within Citrix workspace. So the systems that they use every day, but provide a new way to do that. And just earlier this year, we completed the acquisition and integration of Reich, which was a fantastic addition to the Citrix portfolio. And so we've really begun to think about, you know, how can we actually help employees to do their best work? You know, w w what are the new capabilities that we need within Citrix workspace? What are the new capabilities that we need in Reich? How do we bring all that together with some of the other solutions that we have Citrix Podio is a really interesting suite of productivity applications that we have really aimed at that number one problem, which is how can I get people to be productive, to stay engaged, to lower the burnout and help them do their best work. And I'm really, really excited because there's some fantastic things. So we announced that the work version of the launch pod, which is on October 12th, >>All of those are so critical. You know, I I've always said employee productivity employee is directly related to the customer experience. I've used Wrike myself before, um, for different projects and being able to have productivity tools that allow the employee to engage, to be able to empower them to move projects forward, especially in a time that is still somewhat chaotic is, is critical as is to your point, ensuring that there are the proper tools to facilitate folks so that they get what they need when they need it to help reduce burnout. That's been a big challenge. You're right. That the living at work thing is real, it's persisting, and we're going to be in this hybrid environment for some TBD amount of time longer. So having the ability to be empowered and productive in a secure way, leveraging cloud capabilities is really key. And it's exciting to hear what Citrix launchpad is going to announce over those three days and deliver. >>Yeah. You know, I, I would just say, you know, in, in, in sort of summary where we're, we're really excited about the three areas now, and they really do sort of all come together in some of those challenges that we talked about, you know, specifically around how we can help organizations to address that accelerated it modernization to drive secure, flexible work in the new now, and also to really reach that goal of having extremely productive, distributed teams as we come out the other side of the pandemic. So, you know, lots going on a fantastic time to, to be here and to talk to you and to be at Citrix, of course, with so many, you know, huge customer issues that we, that we have to solve. And we're really excited for the challenge. >>Excellent. And we all are looking forward to that, the Citrix launchpad series, Christian, where can folks go to register for these different programs? >>Yeah, sure. So it's pretty simple. So if we just go to HTTP bit dot Lee, bit dot L Y forward slash Citrix launchpad, and we can sign up through that. >>Excellent. I've already signed up. I'm looking forward to these series, this series, to learn more about what you guys are doing and kind of dig in double click on some of the things that you spoke about Christian. Thank you for joining me today, talking about the launch pad series and letting folks know where they can go to register. >>Thank you. Great to be on the great to see you again. >>Likewise, for Christian Riley, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching a cube conversation.

>> live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's the two you covering Citric synergy, Atlanta 2019. Brought to You by Citrix. >> Hey, welcome back to the Cube. Lisa Martin with Keith Tones in wrapping up Day two Vault Evil coverage of Citrix Energy. 2019 Keith. What a two days we have had. >> This was not a boring show. This has been really exciting. >> It has my cheeks hurt from smiling. >> You know what I've been to shows where the messaging can be repetitive. What we did almost 20 interviews over the past couple of days talking to executives, three of the their customers, all that actually more than three cups way. We talkto four customers, and all the conversations have been different and dynamic and exciting. And that's really great to say about Citrix again. Citrix is exciting. If I were a citrus customer today at, definitely invite them and get it, and I didn't make the show at my invite him in and have a conversation find out what's going on. The intelligent experience is a secretion said. They've been working on it for a few years, releasing today not a surprise, but definitely a great start. >> Absolutely. You know, they came out of the gates yesterday morning in the general session. Really, with this massive pivot for Citrix of really developing technology for the end user for four, rather the general user like those who are not power users, those who shouldn't have to become power users to do their job, whether they're in supply, chain our marketing or finance. So that pivot towards that general purpose user, which is the majority of users, was very ostensible. And it was welcome from not just all the customers we talked about, the analysts as well. Yeah, I think that's >> one of those things that you look at A a Iot. You've said something repeatedly that interesting stat We heard yesterday that applications are designed for the 1% the power user and what we heard today wass the basically commoditization of a I and M l. I've always thought that a M l A. At some point, we'll get to the point that we can push it down to the user and the user would use a female of the same with the use Microsoft excel Today, Citrix is kind of flipped it on me and and and presented way to use a i M. L in a way that I had not thought of, which is to take processes. Business process is not it processes, but business processes packaged them up. What, no matter what APS, they're being used to deliver that process package stat up into a micro, eh? And in users themselves will be able to build a Christian Riley Citrix. CTO said he's mostly aside. That was a great question. Next, mostly aside of about 2019 putting this builder, the citric builder in a hands of not T administrators. But business process. >> So and I wish we had more time on that front. I was curious. What does that do to shadow it? T empowering this business users? Just that I don't want it to get your perspectives on that. Yeah, >> So you know what? It's exciting and scary at the same time. You know, the idea of that a business user can automate a process, and what she takes data out of one system and put it into another one on surface is pretty cool. But I've been kind of keeping my eye out on this multi cloud thing. What happens from a security perspective. When a user build something and eight of us and they have sales force and they have their Oracle database online and they create a workflow, this builder will give them the capability to basically built a multi cloud. I'm quoting, calling at, ah, multi cloud business process that becomes that becomes a competitive advantage to the business and then becomes a business critical application as a result. So you know what we're I see why the excitement is there but from, you know, just a bureaucratic person that's over 20 years of experience and just can't get out of me. There's a lot t kind of just be Riri of and planned for. It's all good stuff >> it is. But you're right, you bring up. You know, I just was kind of envisioning this proliferation of pipe of these sort of custom applications that lines of business users are going to be able to build a lot of enablement there. But then, of course, in terms of this application, exponential growth within a company, what are some of the implications you talked about security. We talked about that a lot the last couple of days, so that's absolutely critical, but in terms of that AP proliferation, what are your thoughts on that? >> You know you >> think about, would you? >> Interesting term, early nineties or late nineties. And we're just in e commerce. And it was very controversial. Amazon was patterning business processes. The one klick to purchase was a big, big deal. Competitors couldn't do that in users who have a completely different perspective. Teo, too. This is a tool. You know, it doesn't matter if this is a Samsung phone. IPhone doesn't matter. This is the tool so that I can get a business thing done. The results. You know, where we've put imaginary barriers, you know, the S 400 sales force shall never touch. Well, it's business. Users will destroy those barriers. They'll see these applications, they'll see these uses. And then we were on to, you know, typical problems. You will create 1,000 of these in a single organization. How did you find them? Like you're out discovery. 1,000 When you want a new app on your iPhone finding, they have to do it a specific thing. You know, Aiken probably search for flashlight on my iPhone and get you what? apse. Which one is the one for my process and best for my process. I can see that at proliferation, been a problem in the enterprise, >> something that we'll have to keep our eyes on. Another thing I was curious to get your feedback on is our p. A. You are the one of the first ones and Twitter to call that out yesterday, saying Alright of Citrix wants >> to be >> delivering the future of work. Automation is going to be essential. And then voila! There's the intelligent experience, but something that we heard a lot yesterday as well. We hear this at every show. Is these massive workforce talent shortages that we're going to be seeing in the next few years? Some industries are already facing them. So, looking at the talent shortage and then the concern over A and R P taking over jobs, they seem to sort of do balance each other out. I'm sure it's not that simple. Yeah, >> we've talked about this awful lot in my circles. There were some people who just won't be able to make the transition to being to delivering higher value, uh, work output. My son talked about a co worker who did not know how to maximize excel. And, you know, we look at that now kind of chuckle, maybe >> a little bit, >> but that's painful. What? What happens when that when our P A auto makes their job their job? Is it definitely ah, process that there could be automated? But on the flip side, we need people to write our Ph scripts. We need people to, you know, way talked about. You know, there always be someone to operate. The robots are is a definitely area that we know not only need people talk, create the robots. We need someone to maintain them. What happens when a regulation changes? You know, Christian talks about liability if something is automated, and we forget that it's automated regulation changes and we continue to go along with the automated process and we're in violation of a standard or compliance law. Wei need someone to go in and quickly make a change. Who are these people? Were those that talent coming from and then this place workers. How do we find work for them to do this value? Add that they could make the transition to do so. It's a lot of complicated questions yet to be answered. >> Well, another thing that was really obvious the last couple of days is the bread of customer success. That's Citric, says having we were able to talk without you. Mentioned four customers from the Miami Marlins. So Major League Baseball to financial managed, a wealth manager company, Schroeder's in the UK We spoke with Indiana University based here in the States and and what they're doing to enable end users like you and me from students. Two consumers of wealth management technology to baseball fans is radically different. But at the same time, it's all about delivering this experience that's personalized. That's customized and tailored to what each individual wants to achieve. And this >> is without even giving the new product from cities We had Dana Garner Alice on earlier today, who said that Citrix really needs to to their own horn. There should be a Citrix inside. I remember early SAS products from companies like a teepee, uh, get support calls on it. I go Teo and uses death type, and they say I'm using this ADP software. This is before a stall for as the service was really a big thing and I looked at him. Oh, this's just Citrix going into another, going into, ah, data center somewhere else. Today, that is very much a sass service, and Citrix is an underlying foundation of that. So it was no surprise from a technology your perspective to see what you are doing. Or is that effort was doing, or a shoulder or even the Marlins? What was surprising was the impact they're having, you know, the providing, ah, accessibility applications to rule parts of Indiana. Ah, the 200,000 in points from a university. This is not, you know, you think of 200,000. There's a lot of clouds. Ah, Cloud company's ass Cos that would love to have 200,000 device is accessing its infrastructure. So extremely diverse set of customers that sister says, And the capability, even without the products announced today, uh, pretty exciting, >> I'm excited to hear and the next, you know, six months or so from those beta customers who've been testing out intelligent experience and seeing what other enhanced business outcomes they're achieving, also wanted to get your perspective on what you heard of the last couple of days with respect to How does it change the game for Citrix from a competitive advantage standpoint? >> Yeah, the tweeted out that Veum where is either going to acquire or quickly announced a Arpaio type solution? This is something that businesses will care about. This is not something that can be ignored. You AI path, which is a complimentary solution to Citrix, just got a $568,000,000 Roundy. Let's put this in perspective. We're hearing software companies get $60,000,000 rounds to create hardware. This is a salt for on Lee Company. A machine learning that does R. P s were robotic process automation. Investors are seeing the value in this company enough that they're going to give a software company who doesn't have buildings they don't have. Uh, this is just to invest in sales. Portia sells people in R and D $568,000,000 to make it happen. You're going to see competitors like being where citrus is a friend of mine. I'm sorry. Nutanix is a frenemy of say tricks, you know, they go to market a lot together, but they have their frame solution. Citrus is, I think, put, you know, all in and said You know what? V m word nutanix frame put up or shut up. This is this is you know, this is this is a seismic move in industry. >> So I gather that you're leaving here pleasantly surprised by some of the things that were unveiled. >> I did not expect Citrix to move so quickly into our p a roar wanted process automation. And this is not something that they thought of last minute. So you know, Christian said they've been working on this for three years. So this is something that they've given quite a bit of thought to. If the same thought hasn't happened already at frame that competitive solution for desktop as a service or if it hasn't already happened. And bm we're workspace and they're set of Ah VD I solutions than Citrix is obviously three years ahead >> and your thoughts on the announcements with respect to deepening relationships and partnerships with Microsoft with Google. >> Yeah, and some of that. It is catch up the VM where has had a solution with azure for quite some time bringing desktops as a service there. So then where has a slight lead on that? But Citrix you know what? Citrix is still a verb. The even when customers are using other solutions, they say You just like this the Kleenex I'm like I would like Citrix access. Well, it's horizon, this frame, whatever I want. I need to get my job done, and I hear that I have to get a citrus account to get it done. So I think Citrix has definitely caught up with both Nutanix when tannic says the Airframe solution and VM, where we're horizon with solutions and azure and then what went on in that? What went, I think unnoticed is that Citrix partners with Veum where to deliver the Xan desktop solution. And then where's via MacLeod on a W S O. That went unnoticed over the past couple of days. But again, more choice. If I were a customer looking at VD I desktop workspace modernization, be pretty excited about my options in the competitive landscape. >> Think they did a great job of positioning themselves as being enablers of the future of work? We talked a lot about today's workforce with five generations of active workers. We saw a great example of I guess a baby boomer with Dr Madeleine Albright on stage, it's going to get 82 years old. See here, >> Baby Boomer, which issues of the greatest generation? I think she's that fifth thatyou know that fifth oldest generation, 82 years old, And I hope >> I'm not >> a sharp is that now. And I'm a little bit more than half that age told, uh, it's not looking too good for me. >> I mean, either way, how she talked about when she was secretary of state, didn't have a computer on her desk. And now she's writing in driverless vehicles >> and presenting at tech conferences and with respect. This is not always Automat Mall. Albright. What? What can she have to offer us? It was an engaged audience, Uh, even with purse like leaning on political power policies. She gets some, and she got a standing ovation at a tech conference. So, you know, it's an amazing testament to what you can offer. No matter you're your age. >> Exactly, and Citrix is doing a great job of being able to deliver and enable their customers to help all of their workers at any age at any generation. Just get the stuff done. Keep it has been such a great time. Such a pleasure working with you for the last couple of days. Thank you for being my partner in crime. >> Turned out better than we hoped. We said we were gonna have fun. I think we have more fun than we thought we would. >> I agree. Well, thanks so much. Say, flight home. I know. I'll see if the next show sometime in some city soon. >> You know, the Cube is at four places right now. I'm pretty sure we'll be in the same location. Pretty So >> I think so. Keith and I want to thank you so much for watching the cubes to day coverage of citric synergy. 2019 from Atlanta, Georgia, We've had a blast. We hope you've had a blast watching. Thank you.

>> Live for London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018, brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to the theCUBE here in London, England for Nutanix .NEXT 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, my cohost, Joep Piscaer. Happy to welcome you to the program, first time guest. Simon Townsend was the chief marketing officer of EMEA for IGEL. Thanks so much for joining us. No, thanks very much for having me. All right, so I see your team has a booth here and it's the end-user computing space, the EUC, as we look at it... We look at... The VDI marketplace is one that's been around for quite a while, but EUC has been heating up quite a bit. Maybe help set the stage for us as to what you're seeing in the marketplace, what's so important now. >> Yeah, I mean, the EUC market's served me very well across my career. I've been in it for probably near on 20 years and for the majority of that, I've seen Citrix dominate that market. When we talk about EUC, we typically are talking about desktop virtualization or terminal services, as it has been for many years. EUC, to me, interestingly enough, probably extends out to these types of devices that you've got in front of you as well now, right? We shouldn't think EUC is just desktop virtualization or desktop as a service. It's how we deliver the workspace, how we deliver applications and data to our users. But yeah, in the last couple of years, we've really started to see a few new, big players come into the market. And I think as we look forward now to 2019, we're now starting to see even more technology and new vendors come into this space as well. >> I actually had a friend of the program, Christian Riley, who is actually now with Citrix, had him on the program two years ago at the Nutanix European show in Vienna. He actually had educated me early on, back when he was at Bechtel, and he said, "We did a disservice to the market calling it "desktop virtualization." Because it's really not about the desktop. It's about the applications and how I get them. And therefore, if I can make that experience on a tablet or on a phone, get it to the mobile workforce, as it were, we're breaking down it into pieces and just enabling the workforce. And therefore, that end-user computing was a better nomenclature. And therefore, architecture's changed greatly from what we called VDI back in the day. >> You're exactly right. And I think as we move forward, at the moment, end user computing... A lot of organizations who historically have had separate VDI teams and separate Windows desktop teams, those two parts of the organization within IT, have actually come together now. And now we have Windows engineering or end user compute teams. But what's interesting is not just the new technology and, perhaps, new organizations, vendors that are coming into the market, but also what's going on on the endpoint at the moment with regard to to Windows. Right? Microsoft is moving very much to this Windows as a service. Lots of organizations are still considering how they're gonna get to Windows 10, but more importantly, how they're gonna deal with Windows 10 once they get there. And IT, to be frank, has been used to building a machine, putting an operating system on it, putting applications on it, giving it to a user, and saying, "Hey, come back in four years time "when it breaks." And Microsoft is changing that. They want to deliver updates significantly quicker as I'm sure everybody's that's watching knows. And I think, actually, that alone coupled with security, which tends to be a key priority for the CIO at the moment as well, that is actually driving some of this change and this fact that this market is heating up again. Because people are saying, "Well, how can I challenge how I deliver applications again? "How can I overcome some of the challenges that Windows 10 "and desktop endpoint management presents me? "And how can I deal with it differently?" >> Yeah, gosh, I think back to... I used to read Bryden Madden when I wanted to learn about VDI He said, "All I need is Microsoft to flip the switch." Because Microsoft Licensing was one of the major things holding us back >> Yes, it was. >> I give Microsoft great kudos as to the push that they've done to sass-ify the world. They not only gave the green light, but they're pushing customers to move to Office 365. And therefore, it's moving to a sass world And so, it sounds like that same floodgate is helping in the EUC space. >> 100%. I mean, if you roll the clock back to Ignite, they announced their Windows Virtual Desktop service that sits on Azure, and about how organizations can (mumbles) for a much lower price point. And then only last week, they did the acquisition of FSLogix, who again, enhance how things like Office 365 are being delivered on those types of non persistent platforms. So Microsoft are putting some investment and some time into desktop as a service or what we would know as VDI, which to be fair, in my opinion, is probably the first time we've seen that in the 20 years I've been working in the EUC space. For many, many years, Microsoft sort of sat back and said, "Well, we've got this terminal services technology, "but somebody else, and A and other vendors "can build that market and sell that product." And now, obviously, Microsoft (mumbles) service. So, things are gonna get interesting. Are they suddenly gonna take over the world? Probably not. People are still gonna wanna deploy things on-prem. People are still gonna want to utilize technologies like Nutanix to deliver a scalable performant desktop at a known price point. It's gonna be a hybrid, but I think it definitely validates the market, and it makes sure that when we're talking about end user compute, VDI or desktop as a service, and virtualized (mumbles) is a serious and key consideration. Yeah. >> But it does move the goal post from it being a problem of hardware, a problem of the operating system, towards solving problems around the applications so that you deliver, solving problems around security or latency. So how does that changing market affect IGEL? >> How does it affect us as (mumbles) organization? IGEL have been around for over 20 years producing... Let's not beat around the bush, it's thin client technology. But as you scratch the surface and you look into what this organization is actually built on, it's actually a operating system organization. The fact that we've got some hardware, the fact that it's German engineered hardware and that we ship hundreds of thousands of these units every year, that's great. And those thin clients, if you like, are provided a way in which organizations can access those virtual desktops, whether that be Citrix, VMware or whatever else the market might offer. But the strength of what we're now doing is in this operating system. And whether that's an operating system that we are delivering via SCCM or an endpoint management tool or whether it's on a USB key, it's the operating system. And the simplicity and the security about Linux space operating system that is changing how people think about the endpoint. And so when I couple what's going on in the virtualization, desktop as a service space, and then also the challenges that people are facing with security and endpoint management, all of a sudden, we have a very unique proposition. It's slightly disruptive because, ultimately, you're saying, "Well, does Windows belong on the endpoint anymore?" Right? There's a strong argument to say that, Microsoft now validating it, saying that Windows probably deserves to belong in the data canter where it's a lot easier to manage, it's a lot easier to patch and deploy applications to, and what you actually need is something that is simple and secure on the endpoint that you're not wasting weeks' worth of time on to try and keep it up to date or to patch it. And it's that operating system that IGEL is providing our customers with that extends the life of the endpoint, but also offers significantly lower operational costs. >> All right, so Simon, Nutanix did a good job of simplifying a good chunk of the stack here. Update us on the relationship, where you see the joint customers, where that's leading in the marketplace. >> Yeah, I've really enjoyed yesterday and today, by the way, at this event. And one of the key reasons for that is not just the joint customers that I get to talk to, but more importantly, the joint partners that we get to talk to. I think there's three words I would use, simple, scalable, and performant. And I think when you're delivering a desktop or applications and data services (mumbles) a user, you want something that's easy and simple to do. You want something that is easily scalable, both up and down. But also something that is performant. And I think when you combine... Particularly historic, when you look at combining Nutanix, Citrix, and IGEl, all of a sudden, you've got all the right ingredients there to provide a very simple, secure and performant environment. As I said, a lot of the people that are here today, joint customers that are using our technologies, we're worry about how we can simplify and secure the EDGE. They're worrying about... Nutanix is really looking at how we simplify and scale the data center and how those desktops are delivered. We've got a whole host of joint activity in the market that goes on, lots of joint customer case studies. But more importantly, I think... And kudos to a lot of the partners that are here. It's the partners that tend to pull a lot of these things together. It's very easy for IGEL and Citrix and Nutanix to say, "Let's work together, do some joint marketing, "et cetera, and go to market." But it's the partners, the valuated reseller, the systems integrators, they're the brains that are pulling these together. And actually, they're removing the complexity of what the products are and the technologies underneath, and providing a solution to their customers. >> All right, Simon Townsend, really appreciate the updates on IGEL, for Joep Piscaer. I'm Stu Miniman, we'll be back with more coverage here from Nutanix 2018 in London. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (slick electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Nice, France, it's theCUBE, covering .Next Conference 2017 Europe, brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, we're here at the Nutanix .Next Conference in Nice, France. Happy to welcome to the program two first time guests, but a partnership we've been talking about since the early days of Nutanix. Bernie Hannon, Strategic Alliance Director with Citrix, and Raghu Nandan, Senior Director of Product Management, Nutanix. Thanks so much for joining me. Happy to be here. Great to be here. AlL right, so Bernie, let's start with you, how long have you been with Citrix, a little bit of background and when will you start working for Nutanix? (Bernie laughs) Ten years at Citrix, and we'll see about Nutanix. But no, I'm Strategic Alliances Director. I manage our alliance partnership with Nutanix, and I've been doing that now for about two-and-a-half years. AlL right, Raghu, little bit about your background, and you must have worked for Citrix before, right? I did, coincidentally, work at Citrix for a while, pretty close to ten years, actually, and I've been at Nutanix for almost three years now. I'm part of the product team, managing the full-stack journey that we've been on, building beyond software-defined storage with the Ember virtualization with AHB, the ops, artistration layers on top, and coincidentally, given the background with Citrix it was the first logical place for us to start to make Citrix a tailored-fit for the particular full stack offering,. That's what we've been working on too. Yeah, and let's talk about that Bernie. 'Cause most people for a couple of years, it was like oh, well Nutanix, they're that little VDI company, and do that, and that of course was a strong partnership between Citrix and Nutanix, but, it's much more that. So maybe, give us a little bit, kind of, the breath and depth of the partnership. Well, yeah, so, Nutanix was not shy about letting us know that they shared a common vision about what HCI could do, and what a partnership together could do to be able to strengthen or to further each others' strategies. And it was really all about trying to simplify the customer experience with EDI. And that's always been a challenge for our customers. And Nutanix, very quickly, was able to demonstrate that they could make deploying Citrix on the infrastructure so much easier for customers. And that's really what we've been about working on since we started this partnership. Yeah, and it's been the perfect-tailored workload like I said before, right. So we're on this journey of re-platforming the data center and collapsing as many silos as possible while bringing that public cloud-like consumption margin where people in the IT departments can go focus on applications and services and more business-oriented functions and kind of let IT be a functional thing without spending inordinate amounts of time. While we started our journey as a company with EDI, we've expanded certainly to a bunch of other workloads. But, when we brought this next new concept to the marketplace in September of 2015 by embrating the scavian derived HyperWiser as a built in part of the overall solution, Citrix was a natural place for us to start and that's kind of what we've been working on in that dimension. Yeah, Cloud has been a strategy, it's gone through a lot of changes in the industry but last year I talked to Christian Riley little bit about Citrix Cloud. Nutanix has had the Enterprise Cloud rolling out various pieces. Maybe you could both speak a little bit to kind of, those Cloud strategies. Sure, from a Citrix standpoint, we've been busy migrating our customers from the perpetual license model to a subscription model. And to leverage that through our Citrix Cloud, where we've moved the Citrix control plane up into the Cloud as a service. So, again, another step in making the whole process of deploying Citrix even easier. So, that's really been our strategy. And working with Nutanix we've made that process even easier through the automation tools that they've developed and now, shortly with the next release, Nutanix solutions are going to come Citrix Cloud ready. And that essentially means that customers can not only have the benefits of that subscription model, but they'll also be able to have the benefits of being able to manage Citrix as a service in Citrix Cloud and get the best of both worlds. And that for our customers is really a true hybrid cloud experience. And the Enterprise Cloud for us as Nutanix is really a fabric that kind of envelops the public, the private infrastructure and even stretches out into the edge, right in pleasing to use the disperse Cloud. And in the context of Citrix like Bernie said while Citrix Cloud makes the deployment of the entire Citrix software start, a non-hassle experience for customers, there is still something to be said for the actual infrastructure where the user re-amps a provision. This is the classic use case for hybrid in a sense because it all comes all the desktops and service bottlenecks where you have users on campus logging onto desktops in the public Cloud, yet the applications they need to access are having to help them back into the Enterprise Data Center and this combination of the Citrix Cloud and on tram Nutanix infrastructure, that just in one click plugs to the Citrix Cloud, lets people experience the best of both worlds. This zero, kind of like a one minute deployment of Citrix software stock and a one click experience from Prism to connect the infrastructure to start provisioning the stops and you can be from nothing to a production environment in literally minutes. Yeah. How does management play between the two of your companies, the management layer? The management layer from a Citrix Cloud standpoint, or? So talked a little bit about Prism there, to talking about how Comm fits in. Citrix has a number of software pieces. Just trynna understand, kind of, the boundaries overlaps integrations. That's really where Comm has done an excellent job of making a lot of that transparent, right. So the whole idea is that from the start, with just a couple of clicks, you're able to make the connection to Citrix Cloud, register and then drop the Citrix Cloud connector onto a Nutanix infrastructure and from there Prism is really managing that management experience. It's really two dimensions right. So think of the Citrix management layer as everything that encapsulates the policies, the governance models, everything around the performance expectations of VDI. Who gets what kind of a desktop, what kind of a profile, persistent, non persistent, all those kinds of things. Seamlessly plugs into Prism, which manages the rest of the infrastructure, physical, virtual, with ops and orchestration. So, I don't have to worry about this user needs a graphics enabled desktop, where would I go provision this? The system just automatically detects that. Or I have this thousand user environment and I don't quite know whether I've provisioned the right amount of compute and memory to the right kinds of users. Prism just tells you through behavioral learning, these users VM seem under provision, these users VM seem over provision. So you're getting the best ROI, in terms of your infrastructure span. So think of Prism as everything that manages the physical data central infrastructure including virtualizing and ops. And the Citrix management stack just plugs into that to layer on the governance policies on top. And then things that Citrix does in the background, in terms of managing the scale out. And making sure that everything is kept evergreen. And that the tools are always being refreshed. That happens automatically and seamlessly in the background. Great, Nutanix has been announced at their last show the Google Cloud partnership. My understanding, there's potential intersections between GCP, Citrix and Nutanix, talk to us a little bit about what we would see going forward, how those potentially play together. So Citrix has a new partnership with Google, Google Cloud platform, and our Citrix workspace and environment, the entire digital desktop now is available to deploy onto Citrix. I'm sorry, onto Google Cloud platform. And we believe that with a vergening partnership that's taking place with Nutanix and Google Cloud platform that there's an opportunity in the future to develop some new stories, better together, so it's something that we're just beginning to explore now, but we think there's a lot of possibilities there. I mean, I'll give you a classic example, right, last week I was speaking with a customer that's running Citrix on Nutanix and they're running it for a certain number of users, let's say a few thousand users, and every year at holiday season, they have these three or 400 contracting employees that come online, that they need extra capacity for these temporary desktops. And this combination of Citrix with Google Cloud platform and the Jorte Cloud services provides the perfect solution in which you could create on demand capacity for kind of, burst expectation of resources and once the contract was (mumbles), the environment shrinks back. So this is a start of a journey and we'll figure some things out, but there are some pretty strong synergies for the three to come together to solve for those kinds of interesting use cases. Great example and we think there's a lot more like those to come. Okay, want to give you both the last word. Either customers, any customer story you can tell, or anything else we should be looking at down the road from the partnership. Well, from a Citrix standpoint, I have to say that they are really appreciative of the partnership that we have with Nutanix. I think they feel good knowing that it's an alliance partnership that we have with Nutanix. So that they can make their investments with confidence. They've had a relationship with Citrix for a long time. And there's trust that goes with that. And in the Citrix name. And the fact that we have a strong alliance partnership, makes them feel good investing in Nutanix and then seeing how that better together story is really unfolding for them. And it's a great partnership for several reasons, but I think the single most important reason is the amount of customer delight it offers. When people bring Citrix and Nutanix together. And I've lost count of the number of customers that are appreciative of how much better their environments are. And we are super excited about how much further we can take that journey with this combination of Citrix Cloud with this one take experience within Prism. Yeah it's not just a promise if it's actually being delivered in this thing, it's actually happening. Bernie and Raghu, thank you so much for giving us the update on the partnership there. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE.