Ok, even though the dust hasn't settled, it is a good time to ask the question to the thread prowlers. What are Citrix Core competencies? Nothing can stop you from posting some inane shit or smart remark, but if the majority of you, the rank and file, cannot answer that question legitimately, you need to take a hard look at the company's (and your job) long term viability (and your marketability when the ship hits the iceberg.) A core competency is something that is innate to the company, that allows it to add value to a paying customer (and thus make money, surprising I know). It gives a company advantage, increases its long term survival AND IT'S HARD TO IMITATE. A core rigidity on the other hand, is an over-reliance on something for too long, something that might actually become obsolete. Most importantly, it is not something that is easy to imitate. So what are Citrix core competencies, or does it only have core rigidities? Regardless of what you feel about management, can you answer this objectively?
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We are past the point of finger pointing. Discuss what are the company's core competencies? Or are the company's views on virtualization nothing but core rigidities? Are we seeing a rendition of the Dunning–Kruger effect?
If only they will drop Ali shahderi, never met a more clueless product release manager that knows nothing about Citrix products. Never let this guy near a customer again, cost me several sales.
Rumours are the Ica/HDX product managers are hit.
Sorry for the fluff... but this thread is probably the best one on the whole board. LMFAO reading through all the great comments from really intelligent Citrites (past and current). In the end, we were right. They just own the game. The feeling I'm getting as this thing moves along is that, perhaps, the best question to pose is how long it's going to be until we're all asking, "Do you remember Citrix?"
Ask 8000 employees what Citrites what Citrix provides and sells...you will get 8000 different answers. The problem is no one actually understand the technologies or could even verbalize to someone why they would want to use it. They never invested in training employees on product knowledge (at their own peril).
The problems at Citrix are running much deeper. Citrix has been a company that values big visions and big ideas without any accountability over execution. That's why MarkT's LinkeIn post where he essentially compares Citrix to Apple and himself to Steve Jobs is so hilarious.
Look at the steep careers that some Citrix execs have been making without ever delivering on anything they talked about, some of whom got spectacularly wealthy in the process. Pair this with the perverse fact that a dollar to acquire a company is a lot easier to come by than a dollar to hire someone and you end up with a lot of really poorly integrated acquisitions. So, M&A is definitely NOT a core competency and the board of directors was asleep as it watched probably more than a Billion dollars of shareholder equity being blown on useless stuff or by not spending an extra 10% post acquisition to ensure the integration works smoothly. Unfortunately, you now see financial factors driving decisions with the usual internal politicking and shortsighted elimination of some of the non-revenue generating jobs that will impact customer and partner satisfaction at some point down the road. You can take the foot off the accelerator and coast for a while on previously built-up speed but at some point you're going to come to a complete stop.
I am convinced there will be more layoffs post January 2016 as Citrix needs to correct the intrinsic problems that have grown over many years and that will take some time.
As far as the core competencies are concerned: The HDX protocol is probably the most widely cited one. The problem is that many others are now good enough for the main stream user cases and Citrix won't be able to maintain its current size by just serving the top end of the market. The "Secure by Design" concept behind datacenter hosted applications and desktop is phenomenal, but MarkT personally destroyed that vision by not insisting on its internal implementation and coming up with a wide open BYOD policy that led to a ton of IP and work to walk out the door with laid off or resigning employees. There are other technical concepts now that are promising to achieve similar security benefits.
I'm spending my entire day in front of docker now. Docker, Swarm, Consul, Registrator. At amazon re-invent they were pushing this stack also. It's going to revolutionize VM management, and I sure would not want to be vmware these days. Either people are running VMs in the cloud or converting their VMs to containers, neither of which is good for vmware.
Microsoft is scrambling to add containers to Windows Nano and not get left behind. They are showing ASP.NET websites running in what are ultimately linux containers.
Citrix can ignore Docker, like they said VMWare and virtualization was a fad, at their own peril.
Knock it down as much as you want. Look outside your window and you will see people doing actual work, useful work with Docker. IBM is throwing its weight behind it. Perception is everything. The market, not us, decide what is value (or usefulness.)
Docker ... The Keyser Söze of usefulness
Why do we need app virtualization when there are Cloud/Iaas/Paas/SaaS and OS-level virtualization a-la-Docker? When people think of virtualization, they think of these as a whole, isolation or combination. What are Citrix's key advantages IN THESE AREAS over VMWare and/or Oracle and/or Amazon? These are rhetorical questions that need to be answered consistently and successfully for Citrix to survive IMO.
It doesn't matter who VHS are.....could be anyone, but fill the gap with whoever you feel makes the story complete.
My heart bleeds to see what's happening, but focussing on the 'core' might just be what's needed. I always said that there was too much distracting stuff going on instead of concentrating on what customers wanted. Desktop/Business Transformation was the right message, but Citrix failed to put all of the pieces in place to deliver this. From App discovery, through remediation, scalability testing and delivery on all platforms, to properly instrumented tools to show end to end what is happening....that should have been the focus. Bit late now though, mobile apps and Cloud hosted desktops are the future....and in the latter case I'm not sure that Betamax or VHS will win!!
If we are Betamax who is VHS, please clarify?
I used to tell partners and customers that Citrix provides an 'Application Delivery' toolbox, and it had a tool for almost every job....the core competency is that you can securely deliver almost any app to any device in any location, and as has already been mentioned another core competency is the HDX remoting protocol which allows you to do this across almost any connection. A killer combination.
Now....following my 'release' as a Citrite earlier this year I joined another company which does very similar stuff.....but to me it's the old VHS/Betamax argument, Citrix has Betamax, which is superior in many ways, but it will lose out to the competition who are investing hugely in making VHS successful. Unless Elliot have an ace up their sleeve, and they can turn the Betamax supertanker around very quickly, many folks will start evaluating VHS and see that it is actually pretty damn good.
My advice to Citrites who are worried....don't be, your skills have been acquired at the best 'Application Delivery' University in town, and they are perfectly portable to many other companies who do similar business. The great thing about Citrix tech is that you need skills across the board (server/desktop/network/apps/virtualization/etc) and most of you are probably in a good position to find something great.
Loved my (long) time as a Citrite, but have found that there is a surprisingly exciting life outside and other peoples Kool-Aid tastes just as good.
TO add to ICA...the only remoting protocol that works on nearly all endpoints....mobile android, mobile ios, ipad, all desktop os platforms, even chromebooks and thin clients. No one does this
TO add to ICA...the only remoting protocol that works on nearly all endpoints....mobile android, mobile ios, ipad, all desktop os platforms, even chromebooks and thin clients. No one does this
1 - The ICA protocol/HDX. While not as widely accepted as RDP...its the basis of all good things Citrix. Its got awesome performance on all but the worst network connections. If you're not on a LAN, it beats the pants off of anything else.
2 - App virtualization...though this is eroding. XenApp is the easiest, most widely accepted way of publishing apps. The problem is less and less people NEED app virtualization because most apps are now either Cloud or SaaS and not client/server or installed anymore. Do you need Office virtualized when Google Docs is there?
3 - Application Data Controller..specifically. ICA Proxy/CAG, Load Balancing, People would really be amazed at what NetScalers could do if they RTFM and really put them to work. Unfortunately, the network guys are too busy being nerds to make their products even more user friendly.
4 - I would have said collaboration. Gotomeeting is a great product, but thats gone now. Too bad.
5 - VDI...the only provider that has all the use cases covered. Pooled/non-persistent, personalized, offline/corporate managed
1 Virtualization
2 Virtualization
3 Virtualization
4 Virtualization
5 Virtualization
There you go, all five