Citrix Systems, Inc. underwent a couple leadership changes this year, appointing new worldwide channel chief Craig Stilwell in January and promoting former CFO and COO David Henshall to CEO in July. But in Canada, vice president and country manager Michael Murphy has been a steadfast leader for the last five years.
Despite rumours early in the year that the company was looking for a buyer, Citrix has persevered to become a major cloud player in the channel, and has particularly showcased its strength in the workspace-as-a-service space. This year, Murphy has been in charge of implementing Citrix’s new cloud-based solution called Workspace that brings together all work-related apps onto one secure digital platform with a single control panel, which was unveiled at the company’s annual Synergy conference, held this year in May in Orlando.
Citrix also launched a new security consulting practice in 2017, which connects customers to its security experts for guidance and risk management, as well as the creation of Citrix Analytics, an artificial intelligence-powered security and behaviour analytics platform that monitors other products in the Citrix portfolio in real time for any suspicious behaviour. If these announcements are any indication, while Citrix has been known for its server, application, and desktop virtualization services, Murphy told CDN at Synergy that it’s also evolved into a security company.
Murphy has overseen the execution of these new products in Canada. He has also continued to work with the Canadian federal government as its secure email and web services provider, and given how many data breaches and cyber security incidents we’ve heard about in 2017, he’s doing a good job.