#CurrentStatus Episode 59 is about virtualization, virtual desktops and more as it relates to the Citrix and Microsoft partnership changes recently announced.  Join Co-hosts Phoummala Schmitt, Theresa Miller, and guest Edwardo Molina cover this topic in depth. What’s new and exciting with this topic, let’s take a closer look.

Citrix and Microsoft Partnership

Their relationship continues to grow and there is always speculations that the two will come together, but instead the partnership flourishes.  Sometimes the messaging is confusing as to whether they are competitors or not as well.  For example they connect a user to a virtual machine.  Citrix is now a preferred partner instead of the preferred partner likely because there are other competitors in the virtual desktop space now.

Other considerations – Microsoft 365 licensing and tools

Leveraging Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is more compelling, because companies are using Microsoft 365.  The licensing overlaps and the features that Citrix brings to the table need to be evaluated.  It’s likely you need some level of both.  Citrix will work with Azure in the cloud.  Companies have to not only look at features, but cost as well.  Continuing along the conversation with Microsoft 365 and the office applications, the web-based collaboration experience is helpful and often works well if you are going this route, but some of the web experience isn’t there over the full featured client installs.  For example we talk about Excel and Word here today.

Citrix Partnership and Teams

Teams is being optimized for virtualization as a result of the partnership there is a lot of effort being put into this.  Teams is the new primary Microsoft 365 tool, and it’s collaboration elements are being leveraged by enterprises on exponential scale.  From the enterprise perspective the investment has been made in Microsoft 365 and now you are added Citrix, the experience will be better.

#CurrentStatus Episode and Recording

Will there be a customer adoption change?

In order for this to be success Microsoft and Citrix need to ensure they are sharing the same message.  So until that changes there may not be a big push for Citrix even though the use case is value.  It isn’t always the case that WVD will be enough.  Citrix experiences for printing, Sharefile, OneDrive, etc and can be great reasons to still leverage Citrix.

Concluding Thoughts

We didn’t have time to share it all here, so be sure to watch/listen to the YouTube version of this podcast shared above today to learn more about the partnership, customer need and more.

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