Citrix Partnership is Dead

You can read this on Linkedin as well, --> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/citrix-partnership-dead-kai-guettner

It seems that after having supported Citrix and their products since MetaFrame and WinFrame, think late 1990's - so over 20 years, Citrix stripped me of my "Silver Partner Status", as I only provide services and not sales. As of 2022, you must now sell Citrix products, even at the lowest Silver level. The problem, is that at the Silver level, you cannot compete with Gold nor Platinum partners that are in your geographical ecosystem. Period.

I was never able to sell Citrix products, as I was always underbid by higher level partners. It was a no-win scenario. Even when I brought deals to Citrix first, which meant that I would get the backend dollars even if I wasn't the partner to sell the product. Citrix never honored this program with me. They always had some excuse of why I was not eligible to obtain those rewards and gave them to the other partner.

Through my relationship with my partner VARs, many of which who are Citrix Gold and Platinum resellers, I've directly influenced millions in Citrix sales and renewals over the years. I tried to explain that to Citrix, but it fell on deaf ears and they refused to reinstate my partnership with them.

Without the partnership, my partner use licenses have expired, on which my entire business was built. I had to switch from XenServer to Hyper-V, from XenDesktop/Virtual Desktops to Remote Desktop, from XenApp/Virtual Apps to RemoteApp and from NetScaler to RDS Gateway. Let's not talk about the lost revenue in the countless hours spent rebuilding everything.

You might ask, "Why did you switch to Microsoft products?"

Well, quite simple, because I can buy the Microsoft Action Pack subscription for $450 a year, and get all the licenses I need to run my small business as a Microsoft Partner. One of the many perks of the Microsoft Partnership.

To maintain my partnership with Microsoft, I don't have to sell anything. I just need to support their products, which my business does, and I get the benefit of using those products to run my business.

Citrix, you have your ears on?

You need a similar program for Citrix partners who provide services only without product sales. Microsoft has learned that lesson.

My team and I will continue to support Citrix products of course, both on-premise and in the cloud. It’s part of our support stack, but not having access to partner only use licenses makes it hard for us to stay current on new products, features and trends.