Citrix enhances its CSA partner program

Citrix Solution Advisor (CSA) partners can now sell any of Citrix’s Delivery Center of products even before they are certified, thanks to enhancements made to the company’s CSA partner program this month.

Tom Flink, vice-president of channels and emerging product sales at Citrix, said the new program enhancements, which the company is calling CSA Authorized, are already in effect. With the changes to the CSA program, Flink says partners can start selling Citrix products immediately, even before they obtain, or while they move through their Citrix certifications.

“Partners are willing to invest when they know there’s business,” Flink says, “so we’re reducing the upfront costs in getting partners certified since partners can start selling right away.”

Regardless of whether or not a partner is certified, CSA partners are eligible to sell Citrix products such as XenDesktop, XenServer and NetScaler, with the exception of XenApp. For a white paper on evolving your XenApp and Presentation Server Infrastructure: A disaster recovery and business continuity solution click here. Please note the white paper is complimentary with registration.

Flink says the company’s XenApp solution is excluded because Citrix wants to better protect its already installed base of customers, who have made a “significant investment” in the solution.

By allowing partners to start selling these solutions right away, Flink says the company has taken away many of the upfront training costs partners usually pay out for before selling a product. Flink says he hopes partners will sell even more products and to more customers with these recent CSA Authorized program changes.

“We don’t want to create a barrier to selling,” Flink said. “We still want to motivate partners to get certified to because for instance, in order to receive Citrix Advisor rewards dollars, partners have to be certified in a Citrix technology.”

As another benefit to getting certified, Flink said all partners who become certified in a specific technology will have market visibility on the company’s Web site with its partner locator tool, where customers can search for partners with a specific solution expertise.

Flink says the company’s overall North American partner community grew by 45 per cent last year based on previous year over year totals. By introducing the CSA Authorized enhancements, Flink says the company will further expand its channel base by making its solutions more readily available and accessible to its CSA partners.

Right now, Flink estimates that about 98 per cent of the company`s channel partners are also Microsoft partners. With the help of last week’s announcements of making its core XenServer platform offering free to end-users, and the introduction of Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V, Flink says his goal is to continue to grow the partner base and doing more recruitment in the Microsoft channel.

In addition, in light of the current global economic recession, Flink provides this advice to partners: “Focus on (your) core expertise and not on shiny aspects or doing anything for a buck. (Partners) also need to focus on total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) because customers want to save money.”

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Maxine Cheung
Maxine Cheung
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