Citrix Co-President Lima: Unicon Purchase Brings VDI Closer To Unified Client ‘Holy Grail’
“We are a premium product, a differentiated product that's all about flexibility, hybrid and highly secured environments,” Citrix Co-President Hector Lima told CRN.
Citrix Co-President Hector Lima sees the vendor’s recent acquisitions as moving it closer to its unified client goal, giving partners and customers access to virtual desktop infrastructure, virtualized applications, web apps, software-as-a-service and more.
“Bringing that all together is the holy grail,” Lima told CRN in an interview. “That will take a little bit more time, but that's what the teams are going to strive for.”
The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based VDI and desktop-as-a-service company’s latest purchase is Germany-based endpoint operating system (OS) provider Unicon, following an acquisition spree that has included Germany-based deviceTrust and Switzerland-based Strong Network, giving Citrix boosts in conditional access and cloud development environments.
[RELATED: Citrix Goes All In With Arrow On Some Distribution Territories]
Citrix Buys Unicon
Lima also shared his views on the competitive landscape and Citrix’s business strategy in 2025, staying ahead of a pool of smaller VDI and DaaS vendors looking to disrupt the 36-year-old Citrix while navigating “co-opetition” with hyperscalers including Microsoft, which has been aggressive in growing share with its Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365 offerings.
“We are a premium product, a differentiated product that's all about flexibility, hybrid and highly secured environments,” he said. “The bigger that these companies get, the more need for flexibility beyond a single vendor [they need]. That's really where we come into play. And that is where we win.”
Although Citrix has taken its new customer acquisition strategy “down to zero,” Lima said, Citrix and its partners have business opportunities selling the vendor’s wares to different personas, departments and affiliates within its existing customer base.
“We've been successful in the last two years,” Lima said. “So many customers have gone to an unlimited capacity–a site license that they can deploy across different departments. They have unlimited use of NetScaler. We continue to add to that portfolio. That also opens avenues to other buyers and customers within a particular company. That has been our focus.”
Citrix’s channel motion has also remained a key strategy for the vendor, Lima said. Its fiscal 2024 saw close to 90 percent of all business through the channel. That included mid-market and enterprise-level customers.
“We rely, globally, heavily, on our Platinum partners, our VARs,” he said. “Not only do they bring Citrix expertise, they tend to generate a ton of our business. And they build practices around our technology.”
Here’s more of what Lima had to say.
What should partners know about the Unicon purchase?
The biggest benefit, in my view, is finally we're able to deliver a true end-to-end solution to our customers that gives access to all types of applications, but truly now from the endpoint all the way through that asset on the back end.
If you think about what we've done over the last 35 years, we deliver a client that then gives you access to all types of applications, whether those are web apps, published apps or VDI or what have you. Now we're extending that to the operating system of the endpoint.
In the very near future, it is going to give us a great possibility to integrate that experience for our end customers, so they can have one application that lets them access all of these different types of assets from Citrix, to get access to all types of applications.
This is not new to our VARs. They've been in this space, whether it's a thin client or whether it's a thin client operating system that they're selling.
To me, it's another way for them to bring more of their services around the center of gravity at Citrix. That's going to expand not only their professional services arms, but also their managed services arm–because they do manage that endpoint–making their lives easier and giving them tools to be more efficient.
What are the business opportunities ahead with Unicon?
It allows customers to maximize the value of the assets they already have. You can repurpose assets. You can extend the life of endpoints. You can truly enable BYO (bring your own), because you can bifurcate the personal from the professional usage.
Whether it's a cost Initiative, a green initiative, or what have you, extending the life and repurposing your hardware has its benefits.
The second key benefit … whether it's Windows 10 [end of support by Microsoft]—or more specifically, what the hyperscalers are doing with PCs in the cloud–we partner very closely with Microsoft and their Windows 365 initiative.
We also partner with AWS [Amazon Web Services] and their Amazon WorkSpaces Core [the vendor’s managed VDI hardware service]. Essentially, they're giving access to fully functional desktops in the cloud.
What better way to access it than through a Citrix client and a thin OS on the endpoint?
What market factors are helping Citrix in 2025?
A key opportunity for us is when we pitch to customers the benefits of going unmanaged at the endpoint. Really separating all of the tools, the security lockdowns, the cost of having a fully managed desktop and PC. This gives us a great outlet for us to be able to enable customers to say, ‘I'm going to bifurcate all of that and I'm really going to lower my cost of ownership at the endpoint.’
That's through management, software costs and hardware costs. There's a huge opportunity there for sure.
Other big picture benefits for us, we plan to include this [Unicon] in both our Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud offerings as well as our Citrix Cloud platform. We want to give customers the option to say, ‘Look, I can deploy not just my back-end services with Citrix, but all the way through the endpoint.’
[In artificial intelligence], there are great advancements that are happening, not only at the chip level but at the software level to run AI learning machines at the endpoint.
That's going to take a little time–you have hardware that's just not ready. It doesn't have the capabilities to run these AI learning machines. So how do you get the admin of being able to use modern technology, but being able to use that legacy endpoint and operating system? We believe that we can enable that.
On the flip side, there's many customers we talk to that say, ‘Look, I'm concerned about my attack surface area on the edge when AI really starts to take hold.’
There's so much more computing power, so much processing power now at the endpoint.
In the near term, customers are going to hedge their bets and say, ‘Can I decrease my surface area, maybe take away some of that logic from the endpoint.’ Using a solution like Unicon adds value there.
What timeline are partners looking at for Citrix and Unicon integration?
Unicon has been around for decades. The technology is proven. They don't have a huge customer base, but they have huge customers, specifically in financial services.
We can hit the ground running with technology that's ready for enterprise-class customers today. What you're going to see very soon is integration of the client.
Our ultimate goal is a unified client for Citrix … SaaS [software-as-a-service] through our Enterprise Browser, and now even co-development environments through the acquisition of Strong [Network, purchased by Citrix late last year].
Bringing that all together is the holy grail. That will take a little bit more time, but that's what the teams are going to strive for.
The product's ready to go. We're making it available to customers today. In terms of big-picture and technology is that integrated experience and integrated client. And then from a commercial standpoint, we're not selling it standalone, we're going to add it to our current offerings, so that way it's part of the bundle.
Is Citrix still acquisitive?
Between Sridhar [Mullapudi (pictured), Lima’s fellow Citrix co-president] and I, we're always looking.
We categorize acquisitions at different levels. Are there tuck-in or adjacent technologies that extend our platform? DeviceTrust, uberAgent, Strong Network and now Unicon definitely do that.
We're constantly looking for those types of companies and technology to bring into the fold. So that'll continue. Is there anything imminent? Not really at this time.
Candidly, we've got some integration work to do just with the handful [of acquisitions] that we talked about.
There may be some larger acquisitions of things that run parallel to the end-user compute Citrix infrastructure. Those are probably longer horizon.
What does Citrix mean [today]? It's not just the virtualization. It's the Enterprise Browser. It is Secure Private Access [Citrix’s zero trust network access offering]. NetScaler [app delivery platform] and XenServer [server virtualization platform] are part of that business unit.
So that ecosystem of Citrix, across end user compute, is all within the business unit. And definitely we see alignment across all of those products.
Have the changes with VMware created an opportunity for Citrix?
There is still a lot of vendor consolidation that's happening in the ecosystem. And I was actually surprised to see how many customers ran a dual vendor strategy with now Omnissa [formerly VMware End-User Computing] as well as Citrix.
It comes up all the time. And knowing those folks on the Omnissa side, too, I know they're looking for those opportunities to see if they can win over some Citrix customers.
Customers are looking for ways to consolidate. There are pros and cons on both sides.
Do you have a message to solution providers around Citrix’s partnering strategy?
We rely, globally, heavily, on our Platinum partners, our VARs. Not only do they bring Citrix expertise, they tend to generate a ton of our business. And they build practices around our technology.
Beyond the VARs, there are a handful of SIs [systems integrators] that we partner closely with. Those that are invested in Citrix, that have end-user compute practices. I'm talking about 10 of them at most that we really partner with and go to market.
We have relationships with all of the three major hyperscalers.
[Microsoft], they are our No. 1 partner. But we also power WorkSpaces Core on Amazon. Very strategic solution there.
And same thing with Google. We have our control plane that sits on the GCP [Google Cloud Platform] instance. We do a ton with Google Chrome.
Nutanix is very similar to us in terms of not just size and scale, but hybrid. That is their value proposition at the infrastructure layer, running Citrix technology on top.
Those partnerships are very critical to what we do.
Over the last six months, we've really increased our level of involvement and partnership with Arrow. First, they took on our CSP business in the midmarket.
Very soon, they're going to take on basically all of our commercial business in Europe and North America, as well as becoming our sole distributor in those [geographies].
We are very confident in Arrow’s capabilities, they are a huge player with a presence in many countries, and we think this is going to be great for our partners, as well as our customers in the midmarket, because it gives them more choice.
Arrow and our partners are able to add new customers in that space. They can add new partnerships in that space. They can dictate packaging and pricing of our products. So to me, over the next two to five years, the sky's the limit of what Arrow can do with our technology in this ecosystem.
Any message to Citrix partners who use distributors beside Arrow?
When Ethan [Fitzsimons, Citrix’s channel chief] and his team started to communicate what was happening, naturally so, other distributors were not happy.
You're taking business off of their plate and moving into Arrow. But beyond the distributors, by and large, the VARs as well as the customers have been very positive.
Arrow is very big, so Arrow did a majority of our distribution anyway across the globe before. So it's not a huge change here. But a lot of these VARs obviously do a lot more business beyond Citrix with Arrow.
This gives them an opportunity now to really bundle at the software level. Much more prescriptive in terms of the pricing and discounting, so on and so forth. So the word ‘flexibility’ is what I would say. Flexibility that we probably have taken away in the midmarket over the last two years, we believe Arrow can bring that back to bear in that space.
The message could be confused, like, ‘Hey, Citrix is pulling out.’ But the reality is, it's all about focus. We're going to focus on the top 2[000] or 3,000 customers that represent close to 70 percent of our business. And we're doing that on purpose.
They need a different level of product. They need a different level of support. They need a different level of engagement. And this model that we've put together allows us to service those customers in a much more effective way.
We don't want to discard the midmarket. So by having a partner like Arrow that can really take the reins and provide a lot of volume of resource and people and partnerships and what have you is going to be very positive for that customer base in the midmarket.
I'm very bullish about our platform now with these different routes to markets that we can service all customers, whether the smallest ones or the largest ones. Whereas I probably couldn't have said that a year ago
How does the new logo activity look for Citrix?
We, full stop, stopped recruiting new logos. Net-new customer, doing top-of-the-funnel marketing and things of that nature. We essentially took it down to zero.
But that, to me, doesn't mean we're not getting new customers. What I tell the team is, in those 2[000] to 3,000 companies, we only talk to one or two personas, one or two customers.
How can we go wide, east-west, across different use cases, across different departments, different affiliates. That has been our focus. And candidly, we've been successful in the last two years. It's a multi-step process.
We've dedicated so much resource to make sure that we're there. We're not doing a fly-by where we come in once every couple weeks or once a month. We are embedded in these customers to really understand their business, their pain points, their opportunities.
So many customers have gone to an unlimited capacity–a site license that they can deploy across different departments. They have unlimited use of NetScaler. We continue to add to that portfolio. That also opens avenues to other buyers and customers within a particular company. That has been our focus.
How does the competitive landscape look for Citrix in 2025?
We've spent the last several years really focusing on enterprise customers that are invested in us. So I personally don't tend to see a lot of the smaller players coming in and being true competitive threats.
Now, they may do that down-market in other segments. But really our core business, which is mission-critical applications, highly regulated industries, we tend to be the one that provides the most comprehensive end-to-end solution. I don't see a lot of the smaller players in that space.
[When it comes to the hyperscalers], customers, even in that enterprise space … they owe it to themselves to evaluate other technologies.
Many of them look at the Microsoft stack, whether that's AVD [Azure Virtual Desktop] or Windows 365 because it's part of the bundle that they most likely have.
Co-opetition, we know that. We go eyes wide open with Microsoft. We've got partnering arrangements both internally as well as at the edge in order to make sure that we show the ‘better together’ story.
But beyond that, our teams have to be well versed on why we exist. We are a premium product, a differentiated product that's all about flexibility, hybrid and highly secured environments.
And the bigger that these companies get, the more need for flexibility beyond a single vendor [they need]. That's really where we come into play. And that is where we win.
[AWS], they've used our technology as the standard platform for virtualization on Workspaces Core. So to us, that is no longer competition. It's actually a partnership for customers that want to go with AWS.
What should partners think about this year’s Citrix layoffs?
It's part of the regular cadence of our business. We are very diligent in our annual planning process. And yes, some jobs do go away and that's unfortunate, not just for those businesses, but also obviously for those people.
But what doesn't get publicized is the investments that we make, whether it is acquisitions … building of new teams, specifically focusing on security.
It's really a reallocation of funds where we think we can get the greatest return.
We're looking where to best invest our dollars. So even if a position is eliminated, there's quite a few where that position is eliminated and that person takes another role where we're investing.
We're not in the business of saying we're cost cutting and doing layoffs. We're just investing capital [that] we think gives us the greatest return.
What do you want customers to know about Citrix’s investment in AI?
I would still say scratching the surface. But our engineering teams as well as our IT teams do use AI today to optimize their workflows, whether it's coding, testing.
The next frontier is how we build AI into our products. We've started that course. But really, where do we take that from here over the next, call it, 12 to 18 months is a big focus for us.
We are the connection point between so many things. The network, the end customer, the application, your contractor.
There is a lot that goes through our IP [intellectual property]. Marrying that with AI technology to really understand what's happening at these customers is a huge opportunity for us
Channel partners remain important to Citrix’s go-to-market in 2025?
In our fiscal 2024, close to 90 percent of all of our Citrix business still went through the channel.
There's this misconception that the channel does midmarket and they don't do enterprise. That is far, far from the truth. The channel is also very embedded in those top accounts that we deal with directly.
We will have channel programs that will continue for those partners that are focused on the enterprise customers. And we need them.
We stopped selling professional services. Really putting value-added rebates to our partners, those that are helping progress the technology.
We want them there. We want partners in these large customers. And that will continue.