>> Live from Atlanta, Georgia, It's theCUBE covering Citrix Synergy Atlanta 2019. Brought to you by Citrix. >> Welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend at day two of theCUBE's coverage of Citrix Synergy 2019. Keith, it's great to be back with you. We had a great day yesterday. >> Wasn't it exciting? >> It was. >> And this is surprising. You know, I have to be honest, as a former Citrix customer, and as a watcher of it, David Hansel talked about the 85% of IT budgets goes into keeping the lights on, et cetera, I'd firmly put Citrix in that 85% of a company that produces solutions that basically kept the lights on. They snuck into the other 15% yesterday. It was a really interesting keynote. >> They've made an obvious pivot towards general-purpose users. David also mentioned, and this is something that I didn't know, that most enterprise software, historically, >> which is the one percent of users. And, they are really positioning Citrix Workspace, intelligent experience, for the general purpose user. The marketing managers, the folks in finance, et cetera, who can really leverage this tool, to dramatically, not just simplify their workdays, but they made this really bold promise, yesterday, that Citrix Workspace One, with the intelligence experience, is going to be able to give each person back, a user, one full day a week. That's two months a year back to actually do their jobs. >> I think I will choose to go on vacation for those two months. >> I'm with ya. >> But one of the things that was consistent, throughout the day was the tone of, one, excitement. All of the analysts, all of the executives we talked to yesterday, very excited about the intelligent experience, but it was, I think, it was more of a abstract thought versus solid, like, this is what the product will do, this is what it looks like, so I'm looking forward to the coming months of seeing the product in action. I could equate it to robotic process automation tools like UiPath and the MiniTools that are out there, but I didn't get a good sense of how deep Citrix is going to go in to robotic process automation, and who would control it. You mentioned the one percent power users. You know when you look at a automation tool, these are tools that are for the one percent, to create these automations, these processes. Will this be something that the Citrix administrators will do on the back end, and then deploy to end users and the app store, similar to how Citrix is deployed today? Or, is this something their going to give users, power-users, the ability to create, so a department team can create a process, an automated workflow, and then deploy that to their team members? I'm strong believer the further you push technology, simple to use to the end-user, the more powerful it becomes, and the more they come up with creative ways to use the technologies. >> And, also, the higher the adoption's going to be. You know, every tech conference we go to, Keith, talks about, you hear the buzzwords, simplicity, frictionless, make it seamless, those all sound great, and yes, of course, as employees of any company, you want that. It's, where does the rubber meet the road? So, I did read, though, that even though the intelligent experience isn't going to be GA until later this year, there are a suite of beta customers. So, I hope we can chat about that with P.J. Hough, their Chief Product Officer, later today to just get a sense of what are some of the impacts that this solution is having on some of these beta customers? Are they seeing significant reductions or increases in workforce productivity, getting towards that, hey, one whole day back? That was the busiest booth, I hear, at the Solutions Expo yesterday. There was a very long line, so the interest, certainly, was definitely peaked, in terms of what they announced yesterday with the audience here. >> So, today's going to be a pretty exciting day of coverage. We're going to talk to, hopefully, a few customers. We're going to talk to P.J., and I'm excited to, kind of, peel back the layers on the announcement around the intelligent experience. Then, we cap off the day with talking to their CTO, Christian Reilly, who, you know, is always fun. So, one thing that we didn't talk a lot about today, you know, KubeCon is happening in Europe, the team is there covering that show. And we didn't talk much cloud, yesterday. While there was announcements around Azure and Google Compute Platform, we didn't get in to, kind of, the details of that, so I'm looking forward to talking to Christian later on today about how is Citrix relevant to the cloud conversation? This whole future of work, we can't talk about the future of work without talking about cloud. >> Absolutely. I know that their cloud revenue is up, but you're right, that isn't something that we got in to yesterday. We really focused a lot on , with our spectrum of guests, on the employee experience. >> Mm hmm >> And, also, got a really broad definition, you know. Employee experience isn't just about when I log in, as a manager, on all of the different tasks that I need to do before I can actually start my function. It starts back, up and to the left, when you even start recruiting for talent. >> Right. >> And, that was, eyeopening to me is they're right, it encompasses the end to end. I kind of thought of it as a marketing funnel, where you're nurturing prospects in to leads, converting them in to opportunities. And then, one of the most important things on the marketing funnel, that's very similar here, is turning those customers in to advocates. Same thing on the employee experience side, is turning those employees in to empowered users that are happy because they're able to be productive and do their jobs appropriately. And then, of course, their business has nurtured them well enough that they retain that top talent. >> We did get, at least, one customer on, yesterday. We talked to Adam Jones, the CRO, Chief Revenue Officer of the Florida Marlins. I got a opportunity to get a dig in on the Chicago Cubs, so that's always a fun thing. But, even from a customer's perspective, Adam brings the COO lens. So usually you're over HR, you're over vendor partnerships, et cetera, he talked about the importance of, one, giving his employees a seamless experience, so he talked about the employee experience, and, overall, keeping the motivation factor high. Speaking of motivation, we learned a new term yesterday, ToMo. >> Love that term. >> Total motivation? What was it? >> Yeah, total motivation. >> Total motivation, so I'm definitely going to look at my ToMo score for the couple of contractors I have on my staff. (laughing) Or at least try and develop one. I thought it was a great, a great, great acronym, but, more importantly, I think organizations are starting to understand. Employee satisfaction, employee experience equates to outcomes when it comes to customer experience. >> 100% >> If your employees are not having a great experience, we talked about onboarding experiences yesterday. If that isn't happening, then chances are, there's a direct correlation between customer experience and employee experience. >> It's a huge risk that companies can't ignore. Employee experience is essential. We talked, yesterday, like you said, about every employee engagement has some relation back to the customer. >> Right. Whether you're in marketing, and you're creating collateral to nurture prospects, or you're in finance, or legal, or you're in the contact center, you're a touchpoint to that customer. And so, you're experience, as an employee, they need to foster those relationships to turn those employees in to advocates. Because the customers, for whatever product or service you're delivering, 'cause we have so much choice these days. The ability to go, "Nope, this isn't working." "I'm going to go find another vendor "who can deliver this service." is a big risk, and so, we were talking to Maribel Lopez yesterday, of Lopez Research, you could really hear her passion in the research that she's done on the future of work. We talked about employee experience, to your point, absolutely critical for customer satisfaction. Employee experience is really essential for digital transformation because businesses really can't transform, successfully, if the employees aren't productive, aren't satisfied, and able to adapt to changing culture as a business digitizes itself. >> As we talk about that other 15 to 20% of innovation, it's odd that we're having this employee experience conversation at Citrix. Citrix isn't a HR software company, let alone a HR company, and we talked to David about this in the opening. How do they transition from just having this conversation with IT administrators, which is the primary audience, here, at Citrix Synergy, to having this conversation with CEOs, CIOs, CMOs, CDOs, the COOs, other C-suite executives. Does Citrix belong at the table, versus these traditional companies we think of? The management consultant firms, who specialize in HR and employee experience, or even other software companies, like SAP with HRM. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the executives that we talked to yesterday, had an experience with SAP. So, Citrix is, absolutely, going about this in a prescribed manner and injecting this culture in to their company. >> I agree with you. We talked to their Chief People Officer and EVP, Donna Kimmel, and with a number of other guests, about the employee experience being a C-level, not just a conversation topic, but an imperative. Because, all of the cogs need to be functioning in the same direction for this company to move forward, and as I mentioned earlier, as every product and service has competition, us consumers, whether we're consumers of commercial products, or technology buyers, we have choice. >> Right. >> And, so, an organization needs to bake in to their culture, the employee experience, in order to ensure that its survival rate and its competitive advantage can go, 'cause we actually did talk about talent attraction and retention as a competitive advantage. And Citrix has done a good job of, you're right, not producing technology for HR, but really being able to speak to that business case being horizontal across any type of organization. >> I thought it was a really interesting point, or at least something that I thought about yesterday, at Citrix, again, we have a bunch of network administrators, system administrators, VP of Infrastructures, that is the traditional audience. A lot of times, we can fill abstracted. That audience can feel abstracted from the business. When you're a call center, when you're in sales, when you're actually touching customers, employee experience, obviously, makes sense then. But, I thought the demonstration with the marketing manager really helped this audience connect with more of those frontline employees and helping to improve their experience and bringing meaning to that traditional network or sysadmin job. You know, when you feel like you're absolutely moving the productivity ball forward. This is generational. Adam Jones of the Marlins said that he's in a generational opportunity. To affect change, administrators will find themselves in a generational opportunity to affect change, to move more than just, you know what, we're going to turn knobs, to actually impacting business processes. >> You talk about generational opportunities. One of the things we talked about yesterday is not just that there are five generations in the workforce today, who have differing levels of technology expertise, but, this morning in the Super Session, we got the opportunity to hear from Dr. Madelyn Albright, the 64th Secretary of State of the United States, the first female Secretary of State. And, I loved how she talked about diplomacy, and democracy, and all of the experiences that's she's had in relation to how technology can be an enabler of that. When I Wiki-ed her, I thought, "She's 82 years old." >> 82? "And there's Madelyn Albright, who is still "professing at Georgetown University." I thought that was pretty outstanding. >> You know, you made the point, in our pre-discussion, about she started at Secretary of State, didn't have a computer on here desk, to riding in the driverless car, and obviously, speaking at a technology conference, I thought it was a great testament to where technology has moved, her ability to embrace change, but, more importantly, what it will take. I think she was a model of what it will take. Another interesting point that she made today was trust and knowing whom you're doing business with. We talked about security a awful lot yesterday. Just from a practical technical sense, being able to trust that the person that I'm talking to on the other end of the phone, is actually who they say they are, or on the other end of a transaction. As we start to share data, make the flow of data allow frictionless sharing of data, we need to be able to trust who we're talking to on the other end. She said, any time something happens in the world, the first piece of information she gets is always wrong is her approach to validation. Trust, but validate. I thought there was a lot of great parallels in that to technology. >> I did as well. On the security front, we talked, yesterday, about, not just the digital workspace of Citrix, but what they're doing on the security and the analytics front to really understand and ensure that the data that they're getting off of users interacting through workspace, is ensuring, that, okay, this person is authorized to be in this application and this particular area of this application. What were some of the things that you heard, with respect to security, that you think Citrix is getting it right? Because, as we know, people; number one security threat, anywhere. >> Well, you know, Citrix has, traditionally, been a leader in products like Single Sign-On, the ability to make the technology frictionless. There's a reason why we have a Post-It Note, right here, with the ID, you know. For our user name and password, it's 13 characters, has to be alphanumeric, et cetera, and then it expires every 30 days. That's not frictionless security. Citrix has made waves in Single Sign-On in making sure that the user experience is frictionless, so that security, as users, we don't try and bypass that security. I think that's just a simple concept that organizations should follow. Then, even on the side of analytics, we have Kevin Jackson of >> GovCloud. >> GovNet on, and he talked about how monitoring employees changes their actions. So, as we're collecting analytics and data to automate processes, how Citrix is making it seamless, and in the course of that, anonymizing the data, so that employees don't feel like big brother is watching. >> Yeah. I thought, you know, the more exposure I get, through theCUBE, to different technologies, the more I've changed my perspective on that. Is it big brother watching me? >> Right. >> Even in call centers, when, this call may be recorded, you think, "Oh, great." Actually, they're using that data, to your point, as Kevin talked about yesterday, its anonymized, but the goal is to make the product and service and communications better. And another thing that it can facilitate, where Citrix is concerned, is making that workspace and that employee experience personalized. >> Yeah. >> Which is what we all expect as consumers. When we go on Amazon, and we want to buy something, we don't want them to show it again. We expect that they know. I've already bought this, maybe service something to me that would be a great addition to whatever I bought. We want that personalized experience to make our lives easier, and that personalization is another big element that they talked about delivering yesterday. And the security and the analytics, I think, are two pieces that can be facilitators of that. Could just also be, sort of, a messenger to make sure more of the users understand the anonymization and how that data about their interactions are actually going to make their experiences better. >> I bought a new laptop, by Microsoft, a week ago, and I was on Facebook, and all of the sudden, I got a ad from Microsoft on Facebook about laptop and laptops accessories. At first, I thought, "Wow, that's weird." But, that may be the first Facebook ad I've ever clicked on because that actually added value. While I felt a little strange about them knowing that I bought a new laptop, Facebook gave me the option to find out how did the ad get served up. Well, Microsoft uploaded a HashSet of email addresses, and my Surface purchase came up, and actually it added value. I was like, "Okay, I can find out what "other material." So, at the end of the day, when you're transparent about what you're doing, and you inform users, and you add value, the end of the day's the key part, you have to add value, doesn't help to advertise Surface laptops after I already bought one. Now, and to, that next stage, to show me accessories and make my experience, my relationship with Microsoft even better, is a great example of that. >> Exactly. Jeff Fritz calls that the line between being creepy >> Yes. >> and being magic, but I like how you add that part of that magic is adding value. >> Exactly. >> 100%. Well, Keith, I'm excited for today. We have, you mentioned, P.J.'s on today, Calvin Hsu is also on today. We're going to be talking with the three Innovation Award nominees. That's a very cool, kind of, American Idol-style voting process, where the public can vote on the Innovation Award winner, which will be announced tomorrow. So, excited about everything we're going to talk about today, and, as you mentioned, we're capping things off today with Christian Reilly, CTO, who we already see, through Twitter, is very excited to be theCUBE with us. >> All right. >> All right, have a great day, yeah? >> Yes. >> All right. >> Let's get to it. >> That's a deal. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, and, again, we are live at Citrix Synergy 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. Keith and I will be back with our first guest after a break.