Accelerate To Win - The Future of Work at Citrix Synergy 2018

David J Henshall, President  & CEO-Citrix
 

Anaheim, CA (USA): Enterprises have become more susceptible to cyber-security risks as work becomes more distributed and employees use cloud apps without its knowledge and consent. IT is increasingly becoming uncertain about where SaaS and web apps are being accessed, or where sensitive data resides. Citrix Access Control attempts to alleviate such cyber-security concerns.

Citrix Synergy 2018, the annual customer conference that happened at the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim,California (US) was a huge success! It was a three day event.  There were certain big announcements made by David J Henshall, President  & CEO-Citrix. The event was kicked off in presence of 2,500 people who had come from across the world. VARINDIA was hosted in the event. The Opening Keynote was on The Future of Work, and how Citrix is making it possible.

Beginning the conference, Mark Ferrer, EVP and chief revenue officer, spoke about the evolution of Citrix products into solution sets that really resonate with customers, partners and employees. Before introducing CEO David Henshall, Mark took everyone back to 2017 when Citrix saw a 122% increase in new patents and an 80% increase in product releases, and then the roadmap for 2018. 

“As Citrix accelerates to cloud and unifies the portfolio, digital transformation is “not just an opportunity, it’s an obligation to our customers. And it all starts with you,” David said in his presentation. 

Press and Analyst Q&A with CEO David Henshall and Chief Product Officer PJ Hough

“More than half of all workloads will soon be running on the cloud. 2018 is likely to be the year where the world will generate more data than all that is already in existence. And millennials - that digital-born, social-platform-dwelling generation - are now the largest portion of the workforce. To realize the benefits of these shifts will require us to transform the way we do business. We need to spend less time managing technology and more time harnessing it for innovation,” David further explained.

There was an earthquake in the morning at 4.15 am of 4.5 magnitude in the richter-scale but the earthquake’s 27 aftershocks were no match for the announcements that followed, beginning with Citrix Workspace app, the industry’s first digital workspace to unify and secure all apps and content for all devices. Along with Citrix Networking and Citrix Analytics, Citrix Workspace will power a new generation of workers with a next-gen workspace that makes it possible for work to happen wherever users are.

Citrix is working with strategic alliance partners to give customers a fully-integrated, fully-supported solution that delivers simplicity, scalability, and security.

One of the important pillars of focus for Citrix is choice without compromise, because of which Citrix workloads can be run on any cloud, including Google, AWS, Oracle and Azure. Citrix will also provide day-one support for Windows Server 2019. With Citrix Endpoint Management, Citrix will unify management of all devices, from mobile to IoT, in an easy-to-adopt cloud service that offers support for Chrome OS, Apple tvOS and new devices including Alexa for Business. It provides IT and security teams with policy controls they never had before for managing the access and use of SaaS, web and the internet sites.

Citrix Workspace features includes instant password-free access to SaaS, mobile and Windows apps, pre-integrated, resilient and high-performance networking and universal search across the entire workspace. Add in Slack integration plus self-service app and desktop provisioning with Service Now, it’s a game-changing, unified environment including SSO that’s available now.

Citrix Innovation Award

During the keynote, Citrix chief marketing officer Tim Minahan introduced the finalists for the 2018 Citrix Innovation Award: Germany’s WAGO, the UK’s Beazley and Health Choice Network from the U.S. WAGO has developed and produced innovative products for power, transportation, process, industrial and building automation markets for more than 60 years. Citrix cloud solutions allow them to scale quickly, maintain security, and remain agile as they keep up with their rapid growth goals. This prestigious award spotlights customers who are using Citrix solutions to drive innovation and IT simplicity. 

Super Session with Dr. Condoleezza Rice

The second day, was equally exciting with the presence of the most influential and powerful people in the world, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. She rose from a childhood in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to become advisor to presidents and an architect of transformational diplomacy during a time of unprecedented and tumultuous world affairs.

“Technology is not good or bad. It’s neutral. The question is how it is applied. Sometimes innovation in technology is not matched by wisdom,” explained Dr. Condoleezza Rice. The Stanford professor and the 66thU.S. Secretary of State opened the second day morning’s Super Session with a thought-provoking discussion that touched on topics from growing up in the segregated south protected by faith, family and education to the enduring ideal of democracy. Dr. Rice had shared her thoughts on the art of diplomacy and its significance, not only on the world stage but also in business, the workplace, and within work teams.

As the first African-American woman Secretary of State and the first woman National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice is a living inspiration of leadership with a unique perspective on global politics and the rise and fall of nations. She shared her thoughts on the challenges facing the county of USA- “If it feels chaotic, that’s because it is,” she said. She has spoken on how she was doing her job is not to make comfortable to all but rather to make more capable and says,“It doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you are going,” she said.

Tim Minahan, Citrix SVP, business strategy, and chief marketing officer, joined Dr. Rice onstage for an excellent and wide-ranging Q&A on diversity, immigration, mentorship, and world conflicts. Ultimately, Dr. Rice offered her own optimistic view. “I have seen so many things that seemed impossible in retrospect becoming inevitable in retrospect,” she said.

Super Session highlights

There were many sessions and every session was full of content and knowledge driven for the audience attending the summit. On its third day event, which was the last day, the keynote session was from Michael Monroe Lewis, who is an American non-fiction author and financial journalist. He said that if human beings were natural statisticians, there would be much less opportunity to exploit it with better data. Michael was explaining on how the enterprising analysts in baseball and on the trading floor found a way to leverage data to their advantage, making millions in the process stories he told in Moneyballand Flash Boys and spoke about on how to leverage the power from autonomy and artificial intelligence.

Lewis’s research points out that “people who aren’t using analytics intelligently are making intuitive judgements  and they are flawed.” At the same time, he says there’s a limit to using algorithms alone to make decisions. Lewis explained that the work of finding a balance between data and people never really ends. His most recent work, The Undoing Project, concedes that we are aware of our cognitive bias.

Overall, Synergy has been a valuable summit and it was absolutely a knowledge event not to be missed. The Final Night Party was celebrated in the House of Blues.

There was also an announcement for the next year Citrix Synergy 2019 that is scheduled for January 7-9 in Orlando, Florida.