Citrix Dumps All Disties But Ingram

Citrix Systems has named Ingram Micro to be its sole distributor in North America, cutting ties with Avnet, Alternative Technology and Tech Data.

The move means that the software company's 1,900 North American resellers that buy through distribution will have to go through Ingram Micro.

Many Citrix resellers have relationships with multiple distributors and all but 120 of Citrix's channel partners in North America have an account with Ingram Micro, said Craig Stilwell, Citrix vice president of Americas marketing and sales support. He said Ingram Micro is assembling a program to help bring those 120 resellers onboard with the distributor.

The change is effective Aug. 29. It covers all of Citrix's software products, including Access Gateway, WANscaler, NetScaler, XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop and Provisioning Server. Not included are the vendor's on-demand services, such as GoToMeeting and GoToMyPC, which it sells directly to customers.

About 75 percent to 80 percent of Citrix's dollar-volume sales go through two-step distribution, according to Stilwell, and Ingram's share of that has been more than 50 percent and growing. So the executive said selecting Ingram Micro over the other distributors means less disruption for the company and its channel partners. (The remaining 20-25 percent of Citrix's sales are through systems integrators and other "one-step" resellers.)

Citrix relies on distributors to help channel partners add value to its products and the consolidated distribution strategy is designed to better leverage Ingram Micro's partner development and demand generation services, Stilwell said. Without the exclusive deal Ingram had less incentive to devote time and resources to help Citrix grow and support its partner base, he said. With the new relationship, "they have a lot more incentive to help grow the pie than they did in the past."

Stilwell said Citrix resellers could benefit from Ingram Micro's development and demand generation programs because many are stronger in delivering solutions than in marketing. "Partners will be better enabled to deliver the solution," he said. Ingram Micro also recently joined the Citrix Authorized Learning Center program for training channel partners.

But one Citrix reseller in the Midwest who works with multiple distributors said he is still trying to understand the value of Citrix's move. "I always thought competition was good," said the platinum channel partner, who asked not to be identified. "It puzzles me how it could be a good deal."

The reseller said many of Citrix's platinum partners are close to Alternative Technology and predicted some won't be pleased with the change. He noted that Avnet and Alternative Technology offer rewards when resellers purchase product using American Express -- something he didn't think Ingram does. And he predicted that the distributors that have been cut loose will aggressively sell VMware, the competing products to Citrix's Xen virtualization software.

Mike Strohl, president of Entisys, a Citrix channel partner based in San Francisco, was taking a wait-and-see approach to the news before passing judgment. "Without understanding the motivation behind it, it's hard to say what the overall impact will be," he said. "There's got to be a bigger picture than this," he said, adding that he hasn't heard from Citrix about details of the new strategy and its expected benefits.

Strohl said Citrix has traditionally looked out for its channel partners' interests when making major changes in strategy, "and I'm hopeful that will be the same in this case. I'm hoping this ends up being a good thing, overall," he said, sounding a bit dubious.

As part of the new relationship, Citrix and Ingram Micro are announcing a pair of new channel partner initiatives: the Ingram Micro-Citrix Smart Enablement Program that rewards partners with redeemable credits that can be used to obtain Citrix-specific marketing elements and training; and the Ingram Micro-Citrix End-user Enablement Program that generates sales leads for solution providers that sell Citrix products.

Citrix informed the other distributors of its plans Thursday. Alternative Technology, which was acquired by Arrow Electronics in 2006, was Citrix's second-largest distributor, followed by Avnet. TechData distributed only the XenServer virtualization software Citrix acquired last year when it bought XenSource.