Citrix Co-President Hector Lima: ‘Make No Mistake, We’re Very Much A Channel Company’

‘Those partners that are investing in understanding our technology, embracing what’s happening around AI and the impact that that’s having around security are going to be able to drive a lot more of their holistic solutions at our joint customers. And we as a platform are here to help do that,’ Citrix Co-President Hector Lima tells CRN.

Citrix’s reveal on Thursday that it is moving the entire Citrix Service Provider business under Arrow’s management for North America and Europe comes amid a series of partner program and personnel changes that affect its ecosystem of more than 1,000 partners.

Recent changes from the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based 37-year-old digital workspace technology vendor range from a new Citrix channel chief to simplifying the programs for obtaining funds as a services partner or an influence partner, Citrix Co-President Hector Lima told CRN in an interview.

The vendor is also focused on growing its reputation as an essential part of the security technology stack as a way to reduce attack surface areas and improve a user’s resiliency, for example.

“Make no mistake, we’re very much a channel company—and we’ll continue to be that in ’26,” Lima said. “Those partners that are investing in understanding our technology, embracing what’s happening around AI and the impact that that’s having around security are going to be able to drive a lot more of their holistic solutions at our joint customers. And we as a platform are here to help do that.”

Citrix Channel Partner Program Changes

In the four years since Citrix was taken private and became a division of Cloud Software Group, the vendor has reduced the size of its partner program but, Lima said, injected more value for remaining partners and the ones investing the most to grow with Citrix.

Mike Strohl, CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based Citrix partner e360—No. 138 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500—told CRN in an interview that his Citrix practice has moved more into a true consulting and services business, with growing interest around the parts of the Citrix portfolio that can make a user more secure and resilient.

“Citrix has a very robust adoption program and services program,” Strohl said. “We are front and center in that.”

Channel Executive Changes

Citrix moved Carey Saunders into the channel chief role as of Dec. 1. Saunders, who has spent about 16 years with Citrix, takes on the title of vice president of channel after serving as vice president of global sales operations for about four years, according to her LinkedIn account.

Saunders will optimize Citrix’s partner of record for top accounts, deal registration, partner margin payouts and other components of the overall partner program, Lima said.

“Given her background in go–to-market operations, she has the IQ and the knowledge to be able to help drive the optimization of those programs,” Lima said.

Saunders succeeds Ethan Fitzsimons, who became senior vice president of global customer engagement in January, according to his LinkedIn account.

Fitzsimons, who has been with Citrix and Cloud Software Group for about six years, will work less on day-to-day partner program operations and focus more on how partnerships are evolving in the years ahead, Lima said. Fitzsimons will look at other lines of business and partnerships Citrix and Cloud Software Group should invest in, including those in security and compliance. Both Saunders and Fitzsimons report to Lima.

Other Citrix personnel changes of note to partners include the promotion of Mark Sweeney to a role overseeing the Arrow Electronics partnership. Sweeney stepped into the role of senior vice president of midmarket growth and global commercial strategy in January after three years as senior vice president of sales for Western Europe and about 25 years in total with Citrix, according to his LinkedIn account.

In Citrix’s product organization, the company has also added specialists that are incentivized to make sure adoption of their technology grows, Lima said.

Partner Program Simplification

As part of Citrix’s efforts to simplify its overall partner program, it is taking the multiple different programs services partners use to receive funds for modernizing environments and increasing adoption of Citrix technology down to one, Lima said. This should allow easier qualifying and requesting of those funds by partners.

Citrix is also getting rid of the tiering structure of its influence margin dollars aimed at partners that influence deals, taking that program to one level to provide more clarity around how much partners can expect to receive.

The influence partner program also exists to compensate partners that lose out on funds from a deal because a customer decided to make a purchase through an online marketplace or directly from Citrix or a partner vendor, which is an increasingly preferred procurement method by some customers, Lima said.

“[Much] of the influencing the channel does and our partners do to customers, that’s also tied to adoption,” Lima said. “The more they help us adopt and expand within customers, the richer the payouts will be.”

Focus On Adoption, Industries, Security Reputation

Citrix’s focus in 2026 is on customers adopting its new technologies and aligning go-to-market efforts more around verticals including health care, financial services and public sector, among other wider campaigns.

Citrix’s technology is especially well-suited for customers in those spaces going through mergers and acquisitions, working with an extended workforce, meeting regulatory compliance, implementing strong disaster recovery and business continuity initiatives and other use cases, the co-president said.

“The idea of going to verticals is we can do everything top to bottom,” he said. “Expertise, CTOs that understand the space, sales campaigns, case studies, marketing collateral—all of that can be tied to the vertical to really drive, not just more business in this space, but more awareness and better solutions for our customers in these verticals.”

Citrix wants users to see the company as more than offering virtualization, with newly acquired brands like Unicon, uberAgent and the newly closed Arctera acquisition expanding the vendor’s capabilities into endpoint operating systems, user experience monitoring and data management, respectively. The company is still acquisitive, Lima said. And it has room to grow in customer multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, he added.

“Customers as well as partners are starting to get the message that we are not a single product company, but we actually provide secure application access across all different modalities,” he said.

This year is about showing customers the flexibility they get with Citrix’s technology, which works with all the hyperscalers and across Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems as well as with web applications and Software as a Service.

Although not traditionally considered a security vendor, Citrix users can leverage its technology to reduce attack surface areas, Lima said. And as AI grows in adoption, Citrix can enable control and access needed to use those products. Citrix’s Unicon acquisition can help it grow a presence in recovery at the edge from ransomware events or other scenarios. And the company’s products can act as a gateway to secure IP from AI models.

“We have a technology stack that limits what could happen at the edge but also provides a high level of recoverability,” he said. “I tend to bundle that into security. The more secure you are, you have to have a resilient solution.”

Citrix partners continue to play an essential role across the business in enterprise, midmarket and commercial customers, Lima said. Partners handle the business end to end in midmarket and with smaller customers and they help with advocacy, implementation and managed services for larger enterprise clients. They should expect to see playbooks, case studies, reference architectures and other resources to help capture opportunities in 2026.