Citrix, IBM Ink Partnership To Target Enterprises

Citrix Systems IBM

"The pie is going to get bigger and our resellers are going to benefit," said Randal Meske, director of global enterprise alliances at Citrix, based here.

Under the agreement, Citrix and IBM, which have been partners since 1996, will target enterprise clients with solutions combining the Citrix MetaFrame application delivery platform with IBM hardware, software, storage and services, Meske said.

"We are working with a select group of IBM industry units and a select group of brands to put together solutions that cater to the demands or needs of the enterprise customer set," Meske said.

While the agreement does not include provisions requiring IBM to work with Citrix channel partners, Citrix expects that its solution provider partners--not IBM Global Services--will be called on to provide services around the sales, Meske said.

"[IBM Global Services has very limited Citrix expertise," Meske said. "We need the Citrix base of solution providers to provide services wrapped around the technology," he said.

In IBM-driven deals, IBM will be working with Citrix partners that also sell IBM technology, Meske said.

Meske declined to disclose how many Citrix partners are also IBM partners.

He also declined to disclose financial terms of the deal, which is an automatically renewing annual agreement.

The IBM deal is part of an overall push by Citrix begun last year to increase its penetration into enterprise accounts, Meske said.

Earlier this month Citrix launched Global 2000, a channel partner program that provides extra financial incentive to partners that succeed in selling deeper into enterprise accounts.