During the last couple of years, the organisational and product changes at Citrix have, at times, been difficult to understand. This has led to some questions around company direction and strategy with some customers questioning long-term commitment to the products. Licensing changes, a commitment from Citrix to maintain only companies sharing their vision, and price uplifts have added to some interesting situations and conversations.
Many have discussed and suggested, the company is in turmoil; redundancies, restructure and a general feeling of, “what is going on?”, do not help the overall picture.
CSG announced the purchase of Unicon in January 2025 and when combined with some other additions, this starts to look like a strategy.
- DeviceTRUST was purchased in December 2024, enabling an expansion of capabilities for Citrix and NetScaler, with zero-trust networking and contextual security.
- Strong Network, also purchased in December 2024, is a company focused on cloud development environments. This suggests the offering will be used to expand the capability of Citrix and their cloud security and offerings.
- UberAgent was purchased by Citrix in March 2024, expanding their offering and giving customers a DEX platform, capable of running across physical and virtual endpoints.
With the acquisition of Unicon this January, Citrix added a secure endpoint into their platform with an associated management suite. Unicon offers Citrix the ability to widen their conversation; no longer is the product about apps and desktops, or delivery of those, it is now a product suite offering endpoint, networking and monitoring in one platform.
The wider question now becomes: how are these products integrated into management platforms, and more importantly licensing? The new approach from Citrix seems to be to simplify licensing and bundle features, including new capabilities, into the new licensing SKU. This is, to be fair, a smart way of adding value into the customer. While customers may feel aggrieved at times by licensing increases - who likes to pay more? - the conversation is softened by additional capabilities. Helping our customers ensure they achieve value from their investment is key; increased costs can be reduced in other areas.
The challenge for Citrix now is simple: having included great features, this only works if a customer wants to replace other products. Many Enterprise customers have a zero-trust networking provider and a desktop strategy for endpoints. DEX remains a priority for enterprises, with many still exploring the right approach and tooling.
The addition of a license enablement for secure device reprovisioning will be a strong element to add into the portfolio, if this becomes part of the core offering.
While giving features is great, moving customers to use them, and seeing value is the next big step for Citrix to continue to thrive, or at least regain customer advocacy.
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