Citrix and Microsoft Align to Help Businesses Embrace Digital Transformation with Cloud and Mobility

Combined Solutions to Accelerate Move to Azure Cloud, Windows 10 and Office 365; Advance Security, Cloud and Mobility Strategies

LAS VEGAS--()--As businesses today face tectonic shifts within the global economy, success is increasingly defined by the ability to optimize the information surrounding people, organizations and devices. Today at Citrix Synergy, Citrix and Microsoft unveiled an expansion of their strategic partnership to meet the needs of the modern workforce with application and desktop virtualization in the cloud, network delivery and enterprise mobility management. From the keynote stage today, Kirill Tatarinov, CEO of Citrix, accompanied by a special video address from Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, announced that Citrix has selected Microsoft Azure as its preferred and strategic cloud for its future roadmap. This partnership will empower joint customers to capitalize on the convergence of cloud, mobile and big data and drive digital transformation in their organizations. In addition, Citrix and Microsoft are working together on new integrations between Citrix XenMobile, NetScaler and the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), based on customer demand.

“Companies of all sizes across all industries around the world have an amazing opportunity to embrace digital transformation and empower their people to work productively from anywhere at any time,” said Kirill Tatarinov, president and CEO of Citrix. “Our customers are asking Citrix and Microsoft to work closer together to help them fully leverage innovations like Windows 10, Office 365 and Azure. This enhanced partnership ensures we can be more agile in responding to our customers’ needs and help them accelerate the move to digital business.”

Accelerating the Move to Windows 10

As part of the expanded partnership, Microsoft and Citrix will offer customers flexible options to deploy Windows 10 Enterprise within their organizations. Later this year, Citrix will offer customers who have licensed Windows 10 Enterprise (Current Branch for Business) on a per-user basis the option to manage their Windows 10 images on Azure through its XenDesktop VDI solution. This will help customers deploy virtual apps or desktops and accelerate Windows 10 adoption for those customers who are using Microsoft cloud solutions. To support the testing of custom-built corporate apps on this advanced operating system, Citrix customers can use AppDNA to accelerate their migration to Windows 10 by providing application lifecycle management tools to discover and resolve application compatibility issues.

Enabling Productivity in the Cloud with Office 365

Together, Citrix and Microsoft are enabling companies to realize the collaboration and communications benefits of Office 365. Customers will be able to take advantage of an optimized Skype for Business “dial-tone” level of experience delivered with the high security of Citrix XenApp and in XenDesktop virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments. XenApp also allows customers to run the full versions of Office 365, including Office plugins and macros giving customers more complete usage of their Office 365 subscriptions.

Expanding Enterprise Mobility Capabilities

To further help companies deliver great productivity experiences for their employees, while enabling IT professionals to help protect company data across both cloud and on-premises applications, Citrix and Microsoft are integrating Citrix XenMobile and NetScaler with the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS.)

Citrix NetScaler will integrate with EMS to provide virtual private network capabilities for more secure, identity-based access to on-premises applications on Microsoft Intune-managed devices. This will give customers a broad array of options for managing access to on-premises applications in an increasingly mobile-first world.

In addition, the Citrix Worx Mail and Forms applications, ShareFile enterprise file share and sync and Citrix Receiver will support EMS, so that customers can manage and secure these mobile app experiences using the same mobile application management capabilities used to manage Office 365 and SAP Fiori apps.

“Our relationship with Citrix has always been founded on the commitment to making our mutual customers successful by empowering their people to be more productive,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft. “By selecting Azure as its preferred and strategic cloud, Citrix is helping companies mobilize their workforces to succeed in today’s highly competitive, disruptive and global business environment.” Read the Microsoft blog post about today’s news here.

This agreement provides enterprises with more reasons than ever to partner with Citrix and Microsoft, in order to optimize productivity across all devices that modern users demand, while ensuring enhanced compliance, manageability and IT cost efficiency.

Follow Citrix

Follow Microsoft:

About Citrix

Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) aims to power a world where people, organizations and things are securely connected and accessible to make the extraordinary possible. Its technology makes the world’s apps and data secure and easy to access, empowering people to work anywhere and at any time. Citrix provides a complete and integrated portfolio of Workspace-as-a-Service, application delivery, virtualization, mobility, network delivery and file sharing solutions that enables IT to ensure critical systems are securely available to users via the cloud or on-premise and across any device or platform. With annual revenue in 2015 of $3.28 billion, Citrix solutions are in use by more than 400,000 organizations and over 100 million users globally. Learn more atwww.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Those statements involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the IT spending environment, revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products and services, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, economic and competitive factors, the Company's key strategic relationships, acquisition and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.

© 2016 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, Citrix Receiver, NetScaler, ShareFile, XenApp, XenDesktop and XenMobile are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Citrix
Scott VanSickle, 408-790-8630
Scott.VanSickle@citrix.com
Twitter: @CitrixPR

Contacts

Citrix
Scott VanSickle, 408-790-8630
Scott.VanSickle@citrix.com
Twitter: @CitrixPR