Citrix To Offer Partners Blueprints, Bonuses, Customers To Push MetaFrame Suite

In a meeting at its annual iForum conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Ross Brown, vice president of worldwide channels & operations at Citrix, acknowledged that many certified partners are getting undercut by volume resellers, and experienced consultants are dealing with new, lower-cost service providers.

To reduce the load, Citrix Consulting Services at iForum is handing over to partners methodologies and other practice information designed to elevate partner billing rates, Brown said.

Some of the company's 37 Platinum partners who have the IP in-house have already seen relief from the pressure on their margins, Brown said.

"We're trying to fix this at the Platinum level," he said, noting that Citrix is meeting with its Platinum Council here Wednesday to hash out these issues and to detail forthcoming programs to train and motivate partners to push the MetaFrame Access Suite. "Citrix is here meeting with Platinums on methodologies transfers. The transfer raises billing rates," Brown said.

On the show floor here, Phil Montalbano, an executive at Citrix partner Network Designs, Sacramento, Calif., said the MetaFrame suite is a good idea to pump product through the channel, but he is worried about the flood of low-cost service houses cutting into his services margins. "They're charging $50 per hour, and we're experienced consultants used to $150-per-hour rates," Montalbano said.

Citrix is also finalizing programs for resellers to push the MetaFrame Access Suite, particularly the Step-Up and Migration Editions, Brown said.

The Step-Up Edition moves existing MetaFrame XP Presentation Server users to the rest of the components of the suite at a cost of $299 per concurrent user. The Migration Edition enables users of the company's older MetaFrame 1.8 Presentation Server to migrate to the entire suite for a cost of $399 per concurrent user.

Sources said the company may hand over MetaFrame 1.8 customer accounts to some partners to ensure that they migrate to the new suite.

While some industry observers say Citrix would be better off integrating more advanced application features into MetaFrame Presentation Server than selling a suite, analysts are positive about the product decision. Several analysts at iForum said they expect the suite to gain traction and generate revenue through the channel.

"Any time you have pieces and parts, fitting them into a suite is an opportunity for users to save on price and also gives the channel a better context to sell because they can see how the pieces fit together," said David Cearley, a senior vice president at Meta Group. "Anything Citrix does has to be managed through the channel effectively or the impact on customers will be minimal. The channel is the way Citrix touches the vast majority of clients, and getting the channel trained on the additional capabilities of the suite is critical."s

During another meeting at iForum, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton said the $14 million advertising campaign the company launched this week is one example of what Citrix is trying to deliver to partners what they need most: demand.

"We weren't creating demand," said Templeton, in a meeting at the conference Tuesday. "Channel partners can't create the demand, they work the demand. The role of the channel is to deliver on the promise [of our on-demand vision]."