Mark Apker, Account Technology Strategist for Sub-Saharan Africa, Citrix and Pravin Singh, Account Technology Strategist for Sub-Saharan Africa, Citrix.

As Citrix moves into 2025, the exciting brand relaunch has led to greater simplification, platform- based ease of use, and additional long-term value for customers. It has reinforced the organisation’s business ethos, focusing on strong, supportive relationships and partnerships.

Citrix was relaunched after the merger with TIBCO Software to form the holding company, Cloud Software Group. In this new journey of innovation, customers can benefit from the versatility and simplicity of the Citrix universal hybrid multicloud. NetScaler, the pioneering application delivery and security solution, is now a standalone entity under the brand and offers value-add.

“As we rebrand, our aim has been to consolidate, simplify, standardise, innovate and automate,” says Shehzaad Noormahomed, Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa. “Citrix is a leader in virtualisation and application delivery control, and we’re now able to provide CIOs with a new way to do business, offering mission-critical enterprise software at scale.”

Relaunching the brand has meant massive transitions, but throughout the journey, the focus has been on harnessing efficiencies and extracting maximum value. Pravin Singh, Account Technology Strategist for Citrix for Sub-Saharan Africa, says the Citrix Universal Hybrid Multicloud will reduce the need for multiple different vendors and save millions.

“The Citrix Universal Hybrid Multicloud enables a variety of different configurations, both on-premise and in the cloud. We are the only vendor that can integrate with all public clouds for our users to consume and our admin to manage,” he says. If you have multiple applications you need to manage, all in different areas or clouds, then all of them can be brought together in one view. Even if you have some information on-premise, some in a private cloud, and some in different public clouds, you simply click on the app and Citrix performs the heavy lifting. Bringing everything together seamlessly provides the best possible end-user experience. Everything is available in a single view on your desktop.

In addition to the massive savings that customers can enjoy, there is also a lot of technological knowhow that goes into providing a seamless user experience. “It’s been 34 years in the making. Our technology is very mature, and it’s for this reason that we are a market leader. Our Multicloud platform works across multiple technologies, and we have everything covered,” Singh says.

The level of innovation and effort that Citrix is putting into its research is making waves in the market. The focus on cost cutting and consolidation has allowed Citrix to offer customers a far bigger bang for their buck.

NetScaler is the secure application delivery platform where the magic happens. “NetScaler has many use cases, and works hand in hand with Citrix solutions, offering secure remote access, load balancing, and security components,” explains Mark Apker, Account Technology Strategist at Citrix for Sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s lightning-fast, with high performance, end-to-end observability, and comprehensive application and API security. It’s able to protect the application space while making sure the environment remains available to users.”

NetScaler is the application delivery and security platform of choice for the world’s largest companies, including over 90% of the Fortune 500. Apker says that apart from its standalone offering, NetScaler can also become a value add product for Citrix customers. “In the application delivery controller market, this can create a massive saving over time. Customers can potentially secure 100% savings compared to what they had previously.”

CIOs in the South African market always need to understand the value that an organisation offers, before they make a decision. “We at Citrix are very channel focused, and are reinvesting into our people, growing our teams, and forming strong partnerships,” says Stacey Ryall, Sales and Operations Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa. “In the emerging market, which includes Africa, as well as Eastern Europe and the Middle East, we see exponential growth ahead. There is a huge amount of competency in our regions, with strong partnerships and effective distribution, and we’re poised to expand in 2025 and beyond.”

In South Africa, Ryall says customers can enjoy the best service from skilled, certified platinum partners, who can implement whatever is needed, providing top quality support. “Over the past year, we’ve made a lot of changes within our own team, to ensure optimal efficiency and customer experience. It’s a journey of trust, and our aim is to grow with our customer.” Says Noormahomed: “The relationships we have with our customers are long-term, and they are based on continuous, proactive engagement that adapts to their changing needs.

We offer a single point of contact when looking after a relationship, and we are fully invested in our clients’ daily operations, to the extent that our corporate account managers spend a lot of time with their customers, and will often base themselves at their customers for the day, rather than at their own office.

“We think of this journey as a partnership with our customers, with a very competitive price point that offers simplified solutions that are versatile and effective. Our aim is to understand what our customers need in order to optimise their businesses, to build strong, long-term relationships, and to offer priority support as we future-proof their architecture,” Noormahomed concludes.

Shehzaad Noormahomed S.NoorMahomed@cloudsw.com

Stacey Ryall S.Ryall@cloudsw.com