CRN Interview: Mark Templeton, Citrix Systems

Citrix's President and CEO sheds light on the software vendor's commitment to the channel and product strategy in an interview with Section Editor Jennifer Hagendorf Follett. Here are the excerpts:

CRN: How is Citrix addressing the lingering solution provider concerns about competition from Citrix Consulting Services [CCS, the company's services arm?

Templeton: The wariness is declining at a high rate of speed based on the actual performance of what the CCS team does. Our behavior here has been very channel synergistic in that these consultants spend half the time creating white papers and intellectual property that then is turned out to the channel, so that they're not reinventing the wheel over and over around sophisticated technical issues.

CRN: Does Citrix have any sort of incentive program in place to discourage CCS staff from feeling like it's an us vs. them situation in dealing with solution providers?

Templeton: There's nothing that we do that [provides incentives for our services people to conflict with a channel partner. Where things can conflict from time to time is in what the customer wants. Sometimes the customer wants some Citrix skin in the game ahead of time, [that is before bringing the channel partner into the picture. That can feel like a conflict to the channel partner, but in fact it's just the preliminary [step to the real game.

CRN: What message should solution providers take away from the go-to-market changes that Citrix made in its last quarter?

Templeton: [The changes helped partners once again get the message that we are a channel-centric, leveraged, go-to-market company, and we are willing to make some of the difficult choices to make that work. Taking the shrink-wrap business and focusing it on value-added partners, separating the volume partner from the value partner, was a very strong move on our part.

When you're doing business through the channel, your challenge as a vendor is to get a disproportionate percentage of their mind share and their behavior share on a daily basis. And I think those [channel program changes helped.

CRN: Some solution providers say they're wondering whether Citrix is abandoning the low end of the market and leaving it to Microsoft Terminal Services?

Templeton: Absolutely not. Where a customer has a very simple need, Terminal Services works. Where they have a complex need, they need our value-add [with MetaFrame. For free, you can get an experience running applications on the server when you buy Windows NT, Windows 2000 or the new .Net server that's coming. And then when you say, 'I like this Kool-Aid. I want to buy it by the gallon,' it doesn't come in gallon sizes, it doesn't come in all the flavors and it doesn't come in all the different package types from Microsoft. That's what we do.