Citrix Sees Strong Cloud Sales Growth, Snaps Up Reuven Cohen As Chief Cloud Advocate

Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS) continues to successfully launch and manage products in the areas of cloud, desktop, mobile and networking, reporting net revenue of $730M for their latest quarter (Q2, 2013), up 19% from Q2, 2012.  Product license revenue is up 21% from Q2, 2012 to $227M for the latest quarter as well.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have never held a position in Citrix stock and do not today, and they have never been a client.

The following table is from their 2Q13 Financial Results presentation:

Managing Multiple Businesses And Making It Look Easy

Citrix continues to be a fascinating company to watch as it successfully competes across a broad range of businesses.  Cloud management, mobility and desktop management platforms, online collaboration, networking and security, and server virtualization are all revenue-generating businesses in the company today.

And while the majority of acquisitions in enterprise software struggle to deliver revenue or even fail, Citrix has been able to bolster is collaboration, enterprise mobility and telecom and networking businesses with solid additions.  Acquiring Zenprise in December, 2012 to bolster its mobile device management (MDM) strategy has led to increased sales, as has the acquisition of Podio in April of last year to augment its Online Services Division (OSD).  In June of last year Citrix also acquired ByteMobile, which gives the company entry into the telecom/carrier market.

At Citrix Synergy 2013 held May 22 – 24 of this year in Anaheim, California the company hosted the Citrix Financial Analyst Track.  You can download the presentation from this track here.  This presentation shows how challenging it can be to manage a business with multiple revenue streams across a broad base of technologies.  The following slide taken from the Citrix Financial Analyst Track illustrates just how quickly Citrix is growing and how mobile & desktop, SaaS and networking & cloud are contributing to their growth.

The addressable market opportunity for Citrix given the breadth of their product strategies is reflected in this slide, also from the Citrix Financial Analyst track:

Why Citrix Snapped Up Reuven Cohen

With so much growth potential in their cloud-based businesses, Citrix needed a seasoned veteran from the cloud computing industry who had both developed and managed new cloud platforms, products and services to the stack level.

They chose Reuven Cohen as their first-ever Chief Cloud Advocate based on his entrepreneurial expertise in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) including being the founder and CEO of Enomaly which was sold to Virtustream in 2012. He is also actively involved in the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) cloud definition, and is a GSA Cloud IaaS BPA awardee, presented Great Britain’s G-Cloud initiative to the Parliament, and is an active delegate in the Sino-EU America Cooperation Workgroup.

He is responsible for leading Citrix’s cloud advocacy efforts with a specific focus on increasing the volume, reach and influence of Citrix’s extensive portfolio of cloud solutions used by more than 260,000 customers and 100 million end users across the globe.  He’ll also be responsible for increasing the adoption of several Open Source initiatives at Citrix as well.   Here are a few of the current Citrix open source projects now underway:

Apache CloudStack, an open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

OpenDaylight, a community-led, open, industry-supported framework, for accelerating adoption, fostering new innovation, reducing risk and creating a more transparent approach to Software-Defined Networking.

The Xen Project, the home for various virtualization technologies powering the world’s largest clouds in production and is the foundation of many commercial products.

XenServer, an open source project and community managed by Citrix. The project develops open source software for securely running multiple operating systems and applications on a single device, enabling hardware consolidation and automation to reduce costs and simplify IT management of servers and applications.

Congratulations to Reuven on being named Chief Cloud Advocate at Citrix, I am sure he’ll accomplish much in his new role.

Filed under: Citrix, Cloud Computing, Louis Columbus' blog, SaaS Tagged: Cloud Computing, Cloud computing forecasts, Cloud networking, CTXS, enterprise software, Louis Columbus' blog, Software-as-a-Service, virtualization, Web Collaboration

WTF is a Data Scientist anyway ?

Chief Technology Evangelist, Speaker
Software AG

Theo Priestley is Chief Evangelist, speaker, analyst and prolific blogger. Globally responsible for enabling the brand and technology awareness strategy at Software AG, Theo is regarded as one of the top thought leaders in Business Process Management and was recently featured in Analytics Week's Top 200 Big Data influencers. He has a keen eye on disruptive current and future trends affecting the enterprise and consumer world today. Prior to joining Software AG Theo spent over a decade as a successful business tranformation consultant. During that time he also became an advisor to enterprise software companies, conducting independent industry analysis on the top technology trends and client-based attitudes towards software implementation and business change projects. Frequently writing…...

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The Big Data hype engine rolls on but nothing ever gets any clearer. Let’s be serious, NASA has been playing with ‘lots and lots’ of data since the time of the Moon launches but it was just data back then, and now all of a sudden it’s this big concern for the CIO ? Of course what comes with a fancy new industry vertical is a fancy new job title to come with it; the Data Scientist.

According to yet another survey this time by NewVantage, 70% of organisations surveyed plan to hire Data Scientists, and 100% of them said it’s “somewhat challenging” to hire a competent one. But just what is a Data Scientist anyway ?

There’s a funny Gartner blog post by analyst Svetlana Sicular (yeah, I know….Gartner doesn’t do funny) in which she heard a couple of definitions;

…a data scientist is 1) a data analyst in California or 2) a statistician under 35

But more importantly, Sicular makes a killer point. ”Organisations already have people who know their own data better than mystical Data Scientists…learning Hadoop is easier than learning the company’s business.” In other words, if you have a Data Analyst employed then your search is over.

It seems to me that as well as an entire industry being set up to handle what is basically just more data (i.e. just scale what you have) there’s a whole other market in squeezing a bigger salary out of an organisation for essentially the same job you already employ someone to do.

The notion of a Data Scientist is a little mad but then so is Big Data. Removing the buzzwords just leaves you with….Data.

And that’s all that it’s about, has been about and ever will be about.

BPM: I’m bringing sexy back – An interview with Peter Schoof at BPM.com

Chief Technology Evangelist, Speaker
Software AG

Theo Priestley is Chief Evangelist, speaker, analyst and prolific blogger. Globally responsible for enabling the brand and technology awareness strategy at Software AG, Theo is regarded as one of the top thought leaders in Business Process Management and was recently featured in Analytics Week's Top 200 Big Data influencers. He has a keen eye on disruptive current and future trends affecting the enterprise and consumer world today. Prior to joining Software AG Theo spent over a decade as a successful business tranformation consultant. During that time he also became an advisor to enterprise software companies, conducting independent industry analysis on the top technology trends and client-based attitudes towards software implementation and business change projects. Frequently writing…...

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Peter Schoof, Managing Editor of BPM.com, one of the largest Business Process Management resources on the web recently interviewed me on my recent appointment as Chief Evangelist at Software AG, my outlook on the BPM industry overall and the forces at work.

In it I elaborate about the preparation for the Software AG Innovation World event, how process sits at the intersection of Gartner’s “Nexus of Forces” and why I’m bringing sexy back to BPM.

You can read the full interview here at BPM.com: Big Challenges and Bigger Rewards

Quips: Why Jeff Bezos Really Bought The Washington Post... Digital - Analog Convergence In Media, Advertising, and Commerce

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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There’s Always More To The Obvious

Source: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Over the past few weeks many have discussed the state of old media.  Since Jeff Bezos announcement to buy the Washington Post, the theories have run wild.  I thought I'd add to the analysis with a different point of view.  A few facts:

1. The Washington Post is not a national paper like USA Today and Wall Street Journal but has the full potential.
2. Amazon is rapidly building distribution capacity for physical goods in North America.
3. Similar to cloud model, Amazon will have excess capacity to ship hard goods

The Bottom Line: Business Model Distruption Part Deux

Massive opportunities exist to disrupt multiple business models.  One can speculate Jeff Bezos to:

1. Take WaPO national. The full potential of the Washington Post is a content and advertising play.  The challenge has been distribution to physical and digital channels.  Combining the excess distribution capacity of Amazon with the Washington Post can resolve some of the excess capacity, similar to the cloud services in AWS.
2. Bridge between digital and physical ad networks. The paper's advertising revenues can be improved with a link back to commerce.  A convergence of advertising, media, and commerce can be created.  More over, the future of commerce is at stake.
3. Use assets to commoditize same day shipping networks. At this point, FedEx and UPS can not provide any additional capacity for Amazon.  While the addition of the Washington Post will not add enough capacity, the ability to provide same day shipping networks and offers via media will provide a significant longer term growth engine.  Think Amazon Supply on steroids.

Your POV

Do you see these trends in Amazon’s and Jeff Bezos’ future?  What’s your point of view?   Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Related Resources

• Monday’s Musings: Four Elements for A #SharingEconomy Biz Model In #MatrixCommerce
• Tuesday’s Tip: Why Context Matters – Forget Real-Time, Achieve Right-Time
• Monday’s Musings: Balancing The Six S’s In Consumerization Of IT
• Monday’s Musings: A Working Vendor Landscape For Social Business
• Research Report: The Upcoming Battle For The Largest Share Of The Technology Budget Part 1
• Research Report: How The Five Pillars Of Consumer Tech Influence Enterprise Innovation
• Best Practices: Five Simple Rules For Social Business

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Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

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The Building Blocks of Successful Corporate IT

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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The job of Chief Information Officer has never exactly been easy. But massive disruptions in business models, technology, and the work force have been throwing up massive new challenges for CIOs and other technology leaders.

We recently put up a post on Harvard Business Review that discusses the organiational building blocks.  Please  take a look at the post and comment as to your views. We'll be going deeper with survey data soon. Blogged on August 8, 2013 on Harvard Business Review

Integrate Insight from Social Channels into Customer Service Operations

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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As a social media user, I expect a brand to hear what I have to say and respond to my questions that I ask via social channels.  While I may receive a response, it most likely came from an stand-alone response team that is separated from the overall customer support organization.  If I ask a phone service representative the same question, it is highly likely that the representative does not know that I posted this question on the company’s Facebook page or on its Twitter site.  Isolated social channels often result in different responses given for the same question on traditional voice and web channels.  Social channels offer a great opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of customers’ interests and behaviors and this information needs to be accessible from the customer data base.  Sharing social insight enables organizations to anticipate customer needs and improve their customer response across all communication channels.  Your social responders may be doing a great job handling inquiries but the information received must be shared to create a holistic view of customers as they navigate among all communication channels. I recommend brands with social site consider the following

Integrate social channel conversations into customer database. Customer comments on social channels need to be included in the customer history database.  As brands actively monitor and filter social conversations, they gain insight into customer’s issues, problems and needs. The amount of data found on these channels is huge and it needs to be analyzed for relevant content and saved so it is available for customer service reps when the customer seeks live assistance.

Engage customers proactively on social sites.   Customers want information regarding matters of interest to them.  Although many service organizations proactively reach out to their customers on matter such as billing or scheduling, they often neglect using social channels for informing customers on matters of interest to them, such service delays or limited-time promotions. It is important to send only specific comments to areas of customers’ interest and to avoid spamming customers with generalized sales information.

Create Social communities.  Online communities invite customer comments and ideas on a shared social site that is vendor sponsored.  Many customers seek comments from peers or technical experts and want an easy way to engage with them. Companies find these communities promote problem solving and improve customers’ options of the brand and its service. Monitor comments social communities to ensure that the peer responses are helpful and accurate and share information gathered from these communities with other departments. Many communities offer “status” rewards for participation and this often promotes high interest by users who want to move to the next level.

It’s Back! The Best Customer Service Survey Ever — Version 2.0

Well, well, well… a lot has changed in one year in customer service, and we want to know exactly what and how much.

Last year we run an extremely successful survey to determine where the Customer Service market was, what people perceived as the big issues, how they were implementing channels (including the new – then – social channels) and what were the plans for the future.

We had a tad over 400 qualified answers and we published the results under the sponsorship of KANA Software.  In case you don’t remember what the results were, here is the deck we used at CRM Evolution to present the results together with Mitch Lieberman.

It was so successful, and so interesting, that we are redoing the survey.  Version 2.0 is now ready for your answers — and we are also collecting data on mobile service in addition to social and traditional, as well as a couple of extra questions (surprise! but you will want to know what these are, trust me).

Please click here, take the survey (it is not long, should take no more than 10 minutes) and share your opinions.  We are trying to increase the number of responses from last year if we can.

We are going to close the survey on August 23rd, right after CRM Evolution, and we aim to have the report ready for KANA Connect in mid-September.  If you complete the survey and give us your email address we will be happy to send you a copy of the full report when available.

What do you say? Take the Survey? Please?

Social Media Authenticity and Other Lies

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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Authenticity

Authenticity, one of the most overused words in social media publishing, is promoted as a key tenet of social media engagement for individuals and businesses alike. There's no disputing the mass adoption of social media for information gathering, information sharing, or just plain networking and communications by people around the globe. Once criticized by some as a fad, social media is the preferred method of communication by an ever-growing population, which means we have to pay attention to it and the new rules of engagement that support it.

Augie Ray writes that authenticity was the first casualty in the pursuit of social media connections. He references many examples including a campaign by Einstein Bagels that gave away a bagel to everyone who "Liked" their Facebook page, resulting in a 7,000 percent increase in fans. In another example, he cites a Gerber campaign in which the baby food giant sponsored a baby photo contest that asked friends and relatives to vote for a baby picture after becoming a fan of the brand on Facebook, regardless of whether they ever purchased a product from or had any relationship with Gerber. How authentic is it to coerce consumers into becoming a fan of your business?

Neither of these brands is being truly authentic in their social media campaigns, yet each campaign was successful and each company is thriving.

Accountability

Recently, I visited a golf resort in Collingwood, Ontario, and experienced a litany of poor service and quality issues. I opened their Facebook page and left a comment reporting the poor service. Within five minutes the post was deleted. When I questioned the management about the poor practice of deleting customer feedback from social networking sites (informing them about how inauthentic this was), they replied: "The reason for this is that we have to protect the investment of other people. By putting negative comments on line the sale and resale value of the timeshares as well as the fractional ownership would hurt."

In other words, their goal is to ensure the value of their property remains high at all costs. He continued with, "We have to protect the interest of our owners and members because we are working very hard to improve and solve the issues that we currently have." Instead of publicly owning up to a problem they recognize having and are striving to solve, (a great example of being truly authentic in social media) they chose to err on the side of financial protection -- authenticity be damned. The protection of a brand and, more importantly, its investors trumps authenticity every time.

We can call out individuals just as easily. How many netizens have become popular or even 'social celebrities' based the presentation of a persona that isn't accurate or based in fact? It's said that social media will call out "fakers" and those who aren't being authentic, yet for each person called out in social media as a fraud, there are 10 who continue to profit from manufactured personas, experiences, and qualifications.

Gratitude

Publicly acknowledging or thanking people in the social forum has become another "rule" that most social media marketers and publishers promote. Businesses are told that you must acknowledge negative remarks and complaints with a sincere "mea culpa" and gush over those that provide positive feedback or recommendations while publicly thanking them. Don't do it because you want to, do it because it's the new social gratitude rule (see "authenticity" above).

Conversely, any mention, share, or acknowledgement requires a swift and public showing of gratitude. Approximately half of my own Twitter stream is made up of people thanking others for re-tweeting their Tweets, for following them, for mentioning them, for replying to them, for listing them in a #FollowFriday Tweet.

Thank you. No, thank you. No, really, thank you.

What would Ms. Manners say about this new social rule? Sure, it's common courtesy to show your appreciation, but how far do we take this? I've seen people shunned and unfollowed because they didn't publicly acknowledge and thank a person who shared their blog post. In fact, it's happened to me. If I were to tweet "thanks" for every mention and share I receive on Twitter, the majority of my content would be social gratitude instead of newsworthy content. Not a bad thing maybe, but what value does that have to those who choose to follow me? Am I not just creating more noise in their social steams?

Passive vs. Active Engagement

The challenge I see is that the rule of expected social acknowledgement and gratitude has created a formulaic engagement process: you did this, and then I do that, in which case you'll reciprocate with this. The rules promoted by social media marketers are creating passive engagement strategies, which are anything but authentic. For example, "Liking" a business's Facebook page is passive engagement whereas posting a picture of you enjoying their product is active engagement. But active engagement is difficult to structure and plan in social media rule books. It requires a focus on superior customer service offline and not planned social media engagement strategies online.

This is permeating many facets of social media engagement. For example, I belong to a very popular blogger community called Triberr, which allows bloggers to form tribes where each member of the tribe can see the others' blog articles as they are published. The expectation is that each blogger will share the posts of their tribe mates on Twitter and various other social channels in order to increase the visibility and readership of each blog in the group. In reality, I've noticed that many -- if not most -- of my tribe mates on Twitter share my blog posts without first reading them. This is a sentiment I've heard from most others in the network. Is this a bad thing? I don't know. Is it authentic? No.

When someone shares an article or blog post on Twitter, is that not an endorsement of the content being shared? Is that not a recommendation for followers to pay attention and read the shared article? Do we not have the expectation that when something is being shared on Twitter that it's an expression of the author's views or information they believe we'd be interested in reading -- and not a contractual or social obligation to satisfy a commitment to a mutual sharing society?

I'm not passing judgement on any of the people or businesses listed in this article, I'm merely pointing out that the principle of social media engagement being based on authenticity has proven to be false. Let's get over it and move on.

What do you think? Too cynical? Is social media really based on authenticity as promised? Does it matter?

Knowledge Management and Customer Satisfaction

We all know the statistics, right?

• most dissatisfied customers will eventually tell 9 other people about their problem
•  only 4% of dissatisfied customers actually complain to the company
•  satisfied customers tell 5 to 6 other people about their positive experience

and many others like it (it costs more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one, etc.)

The again, what if –

What if Knowledge Management could help you reach higher levels of customer satisfaction?

What if Knowledge Management could help you retain existing customers?

What if —

Well, I took this “what if” questions to heart and started exploring that a little bit.  In the final installment in the series sponsored by Coveo about how Knowledge Management is changing Customer Service I wrote one more post: How to leverage Knowledge Management in Customer Service to Ensure Satisfied Customers.

It is a short-ish (my standards) post exploring how you can use KM better to resolve the two perennial problems in Customer Service: knowing the products and knowing the customers.

Please go ahead and read it, and either comment there or come back here to let me know what you think.  I will also be publishing this series as an ebook later this month, and will collect all my writings on Knowledge Management to be published together at the end of the year as well (just letting you know, in case you missed some of them).

Thanks for reading.