Citrix hosted its annual summit at Anaheim in California from 9th to 11th of January, 2017, and in this summit, it revealed a roadmap for the company. It offered a glimpse into what customers and investors can expect from the company in 2017, and the steps it is taking to increase its market share in the global cloud market.

One of the defining aspects is a plan to reinvigorate relationship with Microsoft. This is an interesting plan considering that its President and CEO, Krill Tatrinov has deep experience with Microsoft, and was in fact, the former Executive Vice-President of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Division. Before that, he was in charge of many key technological divisions in Microsoft. Since he took helm in 2006, Citrix has taken many steps to move closer to Microsoft, and in this summit, this strategy was made clear.

During a keynote address, PJ Hough, Senior Vice President products, announced that Citrix and Microsoft customers can deploy Windows 10 desktop on the Microsoft Azure platform directly, with the additional choice to deploy apps as well on Azure.  With such an integration in place, both Microsoft and Citrix are reaching out to mutual customers to help them transition to the cloud more easily. They are specifically planning to focus on those customers who have concerns regarding cloud. A report titled Global Business Technographics Infrastructure Survey released by Forrester shows that 38 percent of enterprises that were surveyed have not adopted any kind of cloud infrastructure, while another 23 percent have adopted just one cloud. This report clearly shows that cloud is not as ubiquitous as it may seem, and there’s always more room for penetration.

That is exactly what both the companies may do together under the invigorated relationship. Customers who already own XenApp or XenDesktop licenses can choose to move to Citrix Cloud-as-a-service. To help them with this transition, Citrix will be offering a substantial set of tools and expert knowledge using both Citrix’s and Microsoft’s offerings. This way, existing customers can get the advantages of cloud without having to pay extra, as the cost of their license will be adjusted towards this transition.

Besides its partnership with Microsoft, Citrix also announced a new pilot program for existing Citrix Service Providers (CPS), who wish to move their deployments to Citrix Cloud. Though this service is free as of now, Citrix plans to introduce a monthly licensing model in the future. With such a product, providers can have a Desktop-as-a-service option for hosting different Citrix technologies.

Also, Citrix is planning to introduce a new set of tools called Smart Check and Smart Scale to help customers deploy and configure apps and mobile workspaces on Citrix Cloud. These two offerings will join the existing Smart Tools family, and are believed to ease the process of cloud transition.

In all, Citrix is making a big push to reach out to those enterprises that have not moved to the cloud yet. To this end, it has renewed its partnership with Microsoft and has come up with a slew of tools to make the process easier for enterprises.

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