Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) has today officially unveiled a new channel initiative to align both firms’ sales and delivery models through a single framework.
The aim of the Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator is to help both firms’ partners build a Cisco VXI with Citrix XenDesktop practice and deliver complete solutions that combine virtual desktops, voice and video for built on optimised datacentre, network and collaboration infrastructure.
“Citrix and Cisco have been working together for over two years to bring a complete solution to the market based on the Cisco VXI platform that addresses the critical customer requirements to enable secure access to desktops, applications and data from anywhere and any device, while reducing operational complexity and cost,” explains Cynthia Gallant,VP, worldwide channel strategy and market development, for Citrix.
“The Partner Accelerator, the next step in the evolution of our partnership with Cisco, arms our joint partners with the tools and training they need to build more strategic relationships with customers and grow their business by increasing revenue and shortening the sales and implementation cycle.”
The Partner Accelerator will offer sales and marketing resources, proof-of-concept and assessment funding. The Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator also provides differentiation in the form of unique branding for those partners “that complete the required investments.”
“The Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator draws from the two companies' best practices to give channel partners the resources they need to deliver complete, multi-vendor solutions that meet the needs of the changing workplace, and build more strategic relationships with their customers,” says Cisco’s director of datacentre go-to-market solutions, Brian Allison.
Richard Bernard, national practice lead, advanced systems for ePlus, says the firm has aligned its lines of business to sell VXI and desktop virtualization solutions. “Taking a more prescriptive approach with customers packaging VXI and XenDesktop, we’ve found that this strategy resonates really well with customers,” he comments. “As a result we have been able to very quickly develop a set of solutions that meet varying customer needs and create new pipeline in a very short period of time.”
Computacenter joined the Cisco and Citrix Partner Accelerator in March 2012. The firm’s workplace business line director, Pierre Hall, says that although already using both vendors’ technology as part of its virtualisation portfolio, “By combining our industrialised processes with the Cisco VXI strategy and Citrix XenDesktop, we will be able to help customers remove cost and complexity from the workplace.”
