>> Live from Atlanta, Georgia, It's theCUBE covering Citrix Synergy Atlanta 2019. Brought to you by Citrix. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage day two of our coverage of Citrix Synergy 2019. Lisa Martin with my cohost Keith Townsend, and we've got another CUBE alumni joining us, Dana Gardner, President and Principle Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. >> Sorry, my language skills are declining on day two. >> It's been a long day. >> It has been a long day. We've had, speaking of, had a lot of great conversations with Citrix Execs, customers, analysts over the last day and a half. People are very excited about what Citrix is doing with intelligence, experience, and really helping businesses to transform their workforces. But you have been following Citrix for a long time. >> Yes. >> So, talk to us about some of the early days back in the 90's. I'd love to get your perspectives on what you saw back then and what your thoughts are about some of the things that they're announcing at this event. >> Sure, well back in 1995-1996, the internet was still the new kid on the block, and browsers were kind of cool but, how would they ever help a business? And then, along comes this company that says, "Oh, we're not going to deliver things through a browser, we're going to deliver the whole app experience, apps that you're familiar with, your Windows-based apps over the wire. Over the internet protocol." Wow, so I remember at Internet Expo in New York at the Javits Center, Ed Iacobucci, The co-founder of Citrix got up there and explained how, yeah, we're going to deliver apps. And basically what they were describing is cloud computing as we know it today. Wow, it was very interesting, but we all kind of look at him like he was a little crazy. (host laughing) Yes. >> And, that's been a long time, man. Citrix has made a name for itself since then. You know, the day I was talking to David Hansel, yesterday and I said, "You know what, Citrix is a verb. I'm going to Citrix in an application. They established something for themselves." And, ironically, on stage yesterday he said, "85 percent of the IT budget goes to keeping the lights on." And I would firmly, as pre-kenote yesterday I'd say, you know what Citrix is firmly in that 85 percent of, they are rock, fast, hard technology partner, but they're in that 85 percent. But this intelligent experience I think kind of pushes them into that 15 percent of innovation. What did you think about yesterday's announcement? >> Well, based on my memory from 1996, I think it's consistent. That they're looking for something that's two or three years, maybe more out that will mature then. But they're not afraid of tackling it now. They had some really strong established businesses, but they're not resting on their laurels. They're looking at, I think a problem that almost everybody can identify with. In the past, their problems were people they could identify with in IT. The end user wasn't aware that anybody was Citrixing behind the scenes. Now, they're identifying issues that people have with work. The fact they were taking apps and services from multiple clouds, multiple data centers some of them our own company, some of our partners, some across an ecosystem or a supply chain, and it's becoming rather crowded. Disenfranchised. Fragmented. And people, I think are struggling to keep up with that amount of diversity. So, we're dealing with, yet again a heterogeneity problem, a reoccurring problem in technology. And Citrix is identifying with something that's a higher elevation than they had in the past. So, they're not addressing just IT although, that's where the actions going to take place to solve some of these problems. But they're focused on just about all of us. Whether we're working in a small, two or three person mom and pop shop or a 30,000 seat enterprise. >> And they've also done this pivot in the last, what we've heard in the last 24 hours, of really being positioned to the general user. Something that I didn't know until yesterday was that the majority of enterprise software has been designed for power users, which is one percent of the users. And so, they've really made that positioning pivot yesterday to, this is for the Marketing Managers, somebody in supply chain who has a day that is bombarded with seven to ten apps. They're losing hours and hours of productivity a week. You can look at that in terms of the amount of dollars that's being spent or wasted. But really making this, bringing those tasks to the user, those actions to the user. Rather than forcing the users to go out to all the different apps, put those pieces together. Oh, and then trying to get back to our actual day-to-day function. >> Right, we wouldn't have to talk about user experience if these things had been designed properly in the first place. It's a bit myopic on behalf of the IT power designer, that they often craft the product for themselves. That, this is still the dark arts behind the curtain thinking. It's very difficult for a highly efficient, productive IT group to create something for a non-IT audience. And I don't blame them, but it has to happen. It's going to happen one way or the other. So, we've seen companies that have taken extraordinary steps on usability, Apple computer is probably the poster child for this. Look at where it got them. There were lots of mobile phones around ten years ago, before the iPhone. Why did the iPhone become so popular, so dominant? Because of the usability. So, Citrix is I think, perhaps doing IT a favor by getting out in front of this. But still, if we're going to get IT in the hands of all people for productivity, what I look to is a fit-for-purpose mentality. No more, no less. You can't design it as if it's your own baby and your own special design, I don't know, once in a lifetime opportunity to strut your stuff. It has to be fit-for-purpose and it can't just be monolithic, where we're looking at little bits and pieces. So, the software's recent acquisition that Citrix made is going to be able to start picking out productivity units, for lack of a better term, from different applications, assimilate those in an environment, the workspace, where the productivity, the work flow, the goal of accomplishing business outcomes comes first and foremost. >> So Dana, let's talk a little bit about, you know the next level. Because it's broken. Even when you look at modern applications, one of the applications they showed on stage yesterday, was a cloud application. Salesforce. I mean, we know a people who make a good deal of money simplifying Salesforce, which is a born in the cloud application. This isn't just about cloud versus legacy, this is about end-user experiences, and end-users using applications in a way that makes them productive. One of the things that caught me as soon as Citrix said that they want to be the future of work, I tweeted out, "Well, you can't be the future of work unless you start to automate processes," and boom, intelligent experience. And the first thing that came to my mind was when we attended an event a couple weeks ago for RPA, Robotic Process Automation tool, that was very user-centric, but used the term "bots". Robots, sulfer robots that did the job. Citrix only used the term, "bots" once yesterday. What's your sense, is this a competitive solution to those partners? Or is this more of a complementary solution? >> I think Citrix is correctly trying to keep the horse in front of the cart and not the other way around. We have to look at work as flows of productivity first, and not conforming to the app second. But to get out in front and say, "Oh, it's all going to be animated and the robot will tell you what to do," I think does a disservice. So, let's take first things first. But let's not also lose track of the fact that by elevating work to a process and not just being locked into one platform, one cloud, one set of microservices on one framework, that we have the opportunity to integrate in analytics along the whole path. From beginning to end. And that we can even have the context of what you're doing feed back into how the analytics come at you. And reinforce one another. So, we need to get the process stuff set first. we need to recognize that people need to rethink getting off a desktop, getting out of email, looking at the full process. Looking at working across organizational boundaries. So, extra enterprise, supply-chain interactions, contingent workforce. Then, bring in analytics. So, first things first but it's going to be a very interesting mash-up when we can elevate process, get out of sort of silos, manage that heterogeneity and inject intelligence and context along the way. That changes the game. >> So, you've seen the workforce dramatically transform throughout your career. There are five generations of people in the workforce today. Madeleine Albright, there she was on stage this morning, 82 years old. I thought that was, what an inspiration? But companies have different generations, different experiences, different experiences with technology, differing expectations. What, in your opinion, did you hear yesterday from Citrix that is going to help businesses enable five different generations to be as productive as they want to be. >> Right, it's an extension of what Citrix has been doing for decades, and it's allowing more flexibility into where you are is accommodated. What device you're using can be accommodated. The fact that you want to be outside your home office but secure can be accommodated. So, what I heard was instead of locking in an application mentality, where everybody has to learn to use the same app, we need to have flexibility. And it's not just ages and generations. It's geographics, it's language, it's culture. People do business and they do work differently around the world. And they should be very well entitled to continue to do that. So, we need to create the systems that adjust to the people and read the people's work habits. And then reinforce them rather than force them into, let's say a monolithic ERP type of affair. And we've know that a large percentage of ERP projects over the years have failed. And it's not that the technology doesn't work, it's that sometimes, you can put a round peg in a square hole. >> Wow, speaking of round peg, square hole, IT, you know, they're preaching to the choir I think on this piece. You know, we want thing to be simpler. We want to get engaged. We want to solve this problem. But, is Citrix talking to the wrong audience when it comes to process automation? To your point, you have to have the large view of it, and a lot of timeS, especially folks at this conference, may not have the large view. How does Citrix get to the CMO's the COO's, the process people versus the technology folks. >> I think that's a significant challenge. Keith and I recorded a podcast with David Henchel earlier today and it'll be out in a few weeks on Briefings Direct, and I asked him that, I said, "You're well-known in the IT department. They use a verb, they're Citrixing. The end user, not so much. But if you're going to impact work as you intend to and as you've laid out here at Synergy, you do need to become more of a household word, and you need to brand and you need to impact." And we know one of the hardest things to do is to get people to change their behavior. You don't do that behind the scenes. In some ways, Citrix has been very modest. They haven't been the Citrix inside, they haven't branded and gone to market with. They've usually let their partners like Microsoft and now even Google Cloud be on the front page, even as they're behind the scenes. But I think they need to think a little bit differently. If they're going to impact people, people need to understand the value that Citrix is bringing. But identifying themselves as they have at this show with work and productivity issues, usability and intelligence will start that process. But I do think they can go further on their go-to-market and not just bring this message to their sales accounts, but to a larger work productivity, human capital management enterprise architect type of base. >> And they are making those impacts. Keith and I today have already spoken with their three innovation award nominees. There were over a thousand nominations. And we spoke with Schroders, which is a wealth management company based out of the UK and how they have been able, a 200 year old company, to really transform their culture with Citrix's workspace was, it was done so strategically, so methodically. But how they enabled that and a seamless integration in terms of their customer experience and engagement with their wealth managers was really compelling. Not only are they able to retain their probably longstanding wealth management clients, but they have the ability now, and the technology capabilities to allow their people to work remote three days a week if they want to or from wherever, and actually work on getting new clients. So, the business impact is really clear. We also spoke with Indiana University. They have gone from just enabling the students on the seven campuses to 130,000 plus across campuses online. They're enabling sight impaired people to also, by virtualization, have access to computer technology. So, you're talking about going from tens of thousands to a ten X at a minimum multiplier, and enabling professors to have conversations and hold classes with people in Budapest. Big impact. >> So Lisa, you're bringing up the point that user experience isn't just employing experience, it's end user and-- >> Absolutely >> Consumer experience. If you're going to do this and do it right, don't consider it just for your employees. It's for reaching out to the very edge of the markets, and that includes consumers and students and mom and pop shops and everything in-between. So when you do this right, and not only will you be delivering intelligence and context to your employees, you'll be able to start to better serve your customers. And that's what digital transformation is really about. >> It is, and the cultural transformation that Citrix is undergoing and that they're enabling their businesses to achieve, like the two we just talked about, are critical catalysts for digital transformation. But to me, employee experience and customer experiences are hand in hand because every employee, whatever function you're in, in some way you're a touchpoint to the customer. If you're in retail, you're presenting a shop-able moment as often as you can. But you also are dealing with customers who have choice to turn and go to another provider of that product or service. So, having those employees not only be satisfied, but have the tools that they need and the intelligence to deliver the content. >> So, I'd be happy to go to a brick and mortor shop. I'll walk in there physically if they can help me in the shopping experience be smarter, but if I can do it online in my bedroom on my browser, then I'll do it there. So it's no so much the interface or even the place anymore, it's who's going to give me the information to make the right decision and make me feel confident that I'm spending my money the most productively. Whether I'm a consumer or a business. So B-to-B. That's what's going to be the killer app, is the smart decision making, and the experience of bringing the right information, right place, right time. That's key. And that's what Citrix has repositioned itself for. I think it's really quite a dramatic shift for the company but they've done it before. >> Well, Dana it's been great having you back on theCUBE unpacking this. It's been an exciting day and a half for us and we look forward to having you back on theCUBE sometime soon. >> My pleasure. >> For Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Citrix Synergy 2019. Thanks for watching.