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Citrix India: The access company
Citrix’s flagship product, MetaFrame, is morphing into a
suite of access products. The company’s Indian arm is overshooting its targets
as it helps India Inc. realise the benefits of centralised computing, says Prashant
L Rao
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| Souma S Das says that the squeeze on IT budgets is
prompting a shift from distributed computing to centralised set-ups, and
that’s where Citrix comes in |
"We are an access company," says Souma S Das,
Citrix Systems India’s managing director for the Indian subcontinent. That simple
statement sums up the ongoing transformation at Citrix India from a single product
company to one with a stable of products. This isn’t an overnight shift, it’s
been happening for the past couple of years and is continuing.
Das believes that the present squeeze on
IT budgets is prompting a shift from distributed computing to centralised set-ups
where Citrix can help companies. CIOs in large set-ups with thousands of users
face the problem of cleaning up virus infections one machine at a time. Then
there are software upgrades. Consider a company moving from SAP 4.6a to 4.6c.
Typically, it would take six months to migrate 3,000 users. "We have a
customer with 500 users that moved from SAP 4.6a to 4.6c. The migration happened
overnight. They set up the profiles on the server and published them the next
day," says Das.
Citrix India has a growth target of 40
percent for 2003. The company managed to overshoot its half-yearly growth target
in H1 2003, achieving 110 percent growth. "We added some large names—Maruti,
LG, Malayala Manorama, Bharti and IIT," says Das. H1 2003 saw lots of repeat
business and the sale of new products to existing customers.
"The thin-client is not a reality
across the globe," says Das. While the thin-client computing model has
its advantages, most companies still use PCs at the front-end. That said, Citrix
India has two customers using non-PC devices (wireless handhelds) on the shop
floor for collecting production and inventory data. In both cases however, non-PC
devices are add-ons to conventional PCs that account for the bulk of clients
used. Globally, Lufthansa uses handhelds for accessing engineering applications
through MetaFrame. VSATs are a popular option for deploying MetaFrame. VPN and
WANs are other options. MetaFrame Secure Access Manager is replacing the VPN
component.
Passage to India
Citrix entered the Indian market in 2000
by acquiring PowerTel Boca, a strategy the company has adopted in other countries
as well. Citrix India revamped its channel programme as well as its approach
to sales and marketing in 2001. The results were there to see the following
year when it came out of the red and posted a profit on the back of 72 percent
growth. Today the company has 600 customers in India, and its channel is more
in sync with the company in targeting the right customers and positioning the
company’s products. These products have done well over the past five years,
Citrix has 120,000 customers across the globe and it should gross $600 million
this year.
Citrix’s products didn’t scale up readily
in the past. All that changed starting in 2000 as the company began its march
from small to medium and large enterprise accounts. It went after companies
with 500 or more networked PCs spread across five or six offices. The launch
of MetaFrame XP in 2001 saw the debut of Citrix as middleware for the enterprise.
That product let companies run any enterprise application across any platform.
In 2002, Citrix India chose and appointed
new partners and system integrators such as Wipro and TCS. These SIs sell solutions
to enterprises that combine Citrix technology with infrastructure, networking
and applications. Citrix also worked closely with ERP vendors to make their
products available over its platform. In September 2001 the company had 280-300
customers. That number has more than doubled to over 600 in the last two years.
Accessing tomorrow
Going forward, the company’s aim is to
provide a full access suite. "We are expecting business in Q3 and Q4 for
MetaFrame Secure Access Manager and MetaFrame Conferencing Manager. 80 to 85
percent of our business is from existing customers," says Das.
While the company doesn’t have an India-specific
website for the outside world, its partners do have access to an intranet site.
MetaFrame supports biometrics and smart
cards and the company is working with software houses that have provided biometrics
solutions. It believes that there are good opportunities in this space.
Clients and applications deployed by
verticals
| Vertical |
Clients in the vertical |
Uses MetaFrame to
deploy these applications |
| Telecom |
Hutch,
Airtel, Touchtel, IDEA, Reliance, BPL Telecom, Tata Teleservices, and Spice |
Billing,
SCM/CRM, Activation |
| Manufacturing |
LG, Maruti,
and Tata Motors |
ERP and
financial applications, HR |
| BFSI |
HDFC
Bank, Citibank |
Core
banking |
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Citrix has a vision; it wants to make accessing applications as easy
as making a phone call. To fulfil this vision, it has multiple products
under the MetaFrame banner. These are:
- MetaFrame Presentation Server—The flagship of the Citrix product
line. MetaFrame Presentation Server lets corporate users access enterprise
applications over a network from anywhere, anytime.
- MetaFrame Secure Access Manager—It provides secure 128-bit SSL
access to legacy (non-Web) applications through a Web browser.
- MetaFrame Conferencing Manager—It lets two users collaborate
using any device on any network to access the same application.
- MetaFrame Password Manager (to be launched shortly in India)—This
product was created in response to customer demand for a product that
offers single sign-on to various enterprise applications, including
messaging and ERP. Password Manager lets companies map all passwords
to the Citrix user ID and password, letting you open as many sessions
and applications as you want and are entitled to.
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Citrix India has 26 employees, a number that hasn’t changed much
from 2001. “We are an equal opportunity employer, there is no gender
bias,” says Das. The average experience of a Citrix India employee
is 9 to 10 years. There are very few junior employees, mostly in administration.
Sales and marketing staff are senior industry veterans.
Employee training takes place throughout the year. Citrix conducts several
programmes globally, some technology-related, other management-oriented—the
company sends the relevant people.
The head office at Bangalore has marketing, finance, administration
and a two-man support centre. Citrix India also has pre-sales, sales,
marketing and support offices at Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.
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Significant Citrix MetaFrame deployments
in India
| Great Eastern Shipping Company (GESCO) |
Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation Server
running on Microsoft Windows 2000. |
Lotus Notes, the HR information system,
Shipnet and other applications related to shipping and chartering operations
are used by up to 60 users. |
Top management can monitor critical information
from anywhere, logging in through the Secure Gateway for MetaFrame over
the Web. |
GESCO intends to deploy a supply chain
management application through MetaFrame XP to let its customers and suppliers
access the GESCO corporate network. |
| HDFC Bank |
Citrix MetaFrame XPe running on Microsoft
Windows 2000. |
Wipro assisted HDFC Bank in deploying
six key applications, including treasury, cash management, and corporate
and retail banking to 800 users |
Application deployment that used to take
weeks now gets done in hours. |
The bank plans to host all major applications
on a disaster recovery site accessible across all locations in the case
of an
interruption. |
| Hutch |
Citrix MetaFrame XPe Presentation Server |
Hutch has bought 200 user licenses of
MetaFrame. It runs five Citrix servers of which four are MetaFrame XPe servers
while the fifth is a Nfuse server. |
It runs its entire call centre in Delhi
on Citrix. Hutch uses Citrix for dealers and dial-up users in remote locations
through Remote Access Servers and IP VPNs. |
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| Malayala Manorama |
Citrix MetaFrame Xpe |
Installed across four servers using Citrix
Load Balancing services. The deployment started with a pilot run by Citrix
India in association with CCSNET. The applications deployed include SAP
4.6C, Circulation and Advertisement System, Vehicle Management System, Inventory
Movement System, Fixed Deposit System, Advertisement Dummy System, Telephone
Monitoring System and Microsoft Office. |
The company saved time on its SAP deployment.
Remote office connectivity was another value-add. |
Malayala Manorama intends to extend the
use of Citrix to all its business offices across the sub-continent. |
| Maruti Udyog |
Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation Server |
Installed on three load balanced HP Proliant
Servers DL80s. The cluster was designed and deployed in three weeks and
applications such as Microsoft Office, Mail Messaging, Outlook, i2 CRM,
UNIX-based applications and MUL's custom-developed ERP system run on it. |
MUL has replaced 300 of its PCs with
HP T1010 thin clients—a major factor in MUL's 20 percent reduction
in TCO. Partners such as Suzuki Motors and MUL's 200 dealers can access
the company's ERP system using a Web-browser. |
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| LG Electronics |
Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server |
600 users across 30 locations access
applications deployed via MetaFrame Presentation Server running on eight
servers. In addition to M System ERP, the company has deployed Lotus Notes
for messaging and workflow at some locations. |
The company estimates savings of at least
Rs 50 lakh per year on bandwidth. It expects to save another Rs 40 lakh
on user training over the next three years. It continues to use older machines—even
286/386 PCs. Invoicing time has reduced from five minutes to 40 seconds
per transaction. |
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