“India and Greater China were the fastest growing markets last year”

Phil Osborne, Citrix Systems’ business development manager for global consulting & systems integration in Asia Pacific, speaks to Gaurav Patra about Citrix’s new partner Wipro Infotech and the Indian market

What exactly is Citrix’s solutions integrator (SI) programme?
We have one of the most comprehensive channel programmes in the industry. Our SI programme is a new channel programme designed for service-oriented partners focused on the enterprise customer market. The SI channel will have a specific focus on the top 100 enterprise accounts, and is chosen on the basis of geographic coverage, overall revenue level and our support commitment and certification. The programme supports a strategic partnership between Citrix and SIs who want to offer customers our products as an integrated part of their solutions and services.

Why did you choose Wipro Infotech as your channel partner?
Wipro Infotech was initially a channel partner of Citrix Systems. Hence, it is quite experienced with Citrix technologies and also has the expertise to cater to our customers.

What are your expectations from Wipro Infotech as an SI partner?
We hope to leverage Wipro’s extensive enterprise reach, quality skill sets and its focus on quality to build a highly satisfied customer base in the markets in which it operates. Wipro Infotech was also our first Gold Level partner in India under our CSN (Citrix Solutions Network) business programme. As a CSN member, Wipro Infotech was providing installation, integration and support for the Citrix application server product line. As an SI, Wipro Infotech can either resell Citrix standalone products or provide a total integrated solution to its end-customers. It also can provide consulting and implementation on server-based computing solutions to the enterprise market. We are today concentrating heavily on the enterprise and SME segment. And through this partnership we will be able to address this space. Although Wipro Infotech has its presence in some other countries, our partnership is limited to the Indian market.

What sort of growth are you expecting from the Indian market?
India is a very critical market for us. Last year, two of the fastest growing markets were India and Greater China. In fact, the Pacific region, which includes India, was the fastest growing region for us. Taking into consideration the worldwide economic slowdown, this growth was extraordinary. And we are expecting to do well in this market place even in the days to come. Apart from the enterprise and SME segments we are also concentrating on other high growth segments like the government, finance and manufacturing segments. In India, we are also interested in telecommunications partners. Security being a major issue for companies today, Citrix will soon have some announcements about security level products. And this will be very important for India.

What exactly is Citrix Secure Gateway?
This is a secure gateway via the Internet. Many organisations are turning to the Internet as their preferred network for application deployment due to its lower cost, greater geographic reach and faster implementation speed. Citrix Secure Gateway (CSG) enables any organisation to deliver existing applications in a secure and simple manner across the Internet, on demand, to any device. It functions as a secure Internet gateway between MetaFrame servers and ICA client workstations and is easy to deploy. It also reduces costs, provides ease in firewall traversal, and has tight integration with Citrix NFuse Classic. All data traversing the Internet, between the client workstation and the CSG server is encrypted, ensuring privacy and integrity of information flow. It also allows Citrix MetaFrame for Windows and Citrix MetaFrame 1.1 for UNIX customers to deliver business-critical applications over the Internet, on demand to any device. It also provides a single point of entry and secure access to Citrix MetaFrame server farms and also eliminates the need to install additional client software, beyond the Citrix ICA client and can easily traverse Internet firewalls. It is completely transparent to both applications and network devices.