Multiple CDN Newsmaker Michael Murphy opened a brand new office for Citrix in Canada. He also helped to make the Canadian operation more of a cloud player than ever before.
In 2016, Citrix deepened its partnership with Microsoft to integrate even more solutions with Azure. This move solidified Citrix as an all-in cloud player to the channel. It also took Citrix’ partnership with Microsoft to the next level with the integration between Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) and Intune with XenMobile and NetScaler, NetScaler with Azure Active Directory, and finally enabling XenDesktop-powered VDI to deliver Windows 10 desktop-as-a-service from Azure cloud.
What made this significant is that Citrix was able to move Microsoft off its position – somewhat – by relaxing Windows 10 licensing requirements to accommodate VDI deployments, in a hope that the move will also drive adoption of the operating system and Office 365.
Citrix also partnered with Nutanix in 2016 with a new joint hyper-converged solution called InstantON VDI.
New workspaces became a huge initiative for Citrix in 2016. Citrix showcased new products and services that offer the promise to accelerate digital transformation efforts by delivering a unified Workspace-as-a-Service (WaaS) that enables workers with secure, on-demand access to the apps and data they need to work effectively and efficiently from anywhere. These on-demand workspaces from Citrix also give IT the ability to securely deliver and manage it all from a single, unified control plane.