Wednesday, August 22, 2018

How MSPs Leverage Bitdefender’s Layered Approach to Security for Comprehensive Client Protection

Transcript of a discussion on how managed service providers are building better security postures to help small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises best manage and protect their customers’ end devices and workspaces.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Bitdefender

Dana Gardner: Welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect  podcast series, now in its 13th year. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator.

Gardner
As solving security concerns has risen to the top of the requirements list for just about everyone, service providers in particular have had to step up their game. Because just as cloud models and outsourcing of more data center functions have become more popular, the security needs across cloud models have grown even more fast-paced and pressing.

As small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have turned to managed service providers (MSPs) to be in effect their IT departments, they are also seeking those MSPs to serve as their best defenses against security risks.

Today’s BriefingsDirect security insights discussion examines how MSPs are building better security postures from their networks and data centers. Here to discuss the role of the latest security technology in making MSPs more like security services providers is Brian Luckey, Director of Managed Services at All Covered, IT Services from Konica Minolta, in Ramsey, New Jersey. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Luckey: Thank you for having me.

Gardner: We are also joined by Jeremy Wiginton, Applications Administrator, also at All Covered, IT Services from Konica Minolta. Welcome, Jeremy!

Jeremy Wiginton: Thank you.

Gardner: What are some of the trends that have been driving the need for MSPs like yourselves to provide even more and better security solutions?

Managing security expectations

Luckey: As MSPs, we are expected, especially for SMBs, to cover the entire gamut when it comes to managing or overseeing an organization’s IT function. And with IT functions come those security services.

It’s just an expectation at this point when you are managing the IT services for our clients. They are also expecting that we are overseeing the security part of that function as well.

Gardner: How has this changed from three to five years ago? What has changed that makes you more of a security services provider?

Luckey
Luckey: A major driver has been the awareness of needing heightened security. So all of the news, the different security breach events -- especially over the last 12 months, let alone the last couple of years -- with WannaCry and Petya.

Now, not only companies but the owners and executives are more in tune with the risks. This has sparked more interest in making sure that they are protected and feel like they are protected. This has all definitely increased the need for MPSs to provide these IT services.

Gardner: As we have had more awareness, more concerns, and more publicity, then the expectations are higher.

Jeremy, what are some of the technical advances that you feel are most responsible for allowing you as an MSP to react better to these risks?

Wiginton: The capability for the fast analytics, the fast reporting, and the fast responses that we can get out of the products and solutions that we use helps tremendously in making sure that our clients are well-protected and that security -- any security issues that might pop up -- are mitigated very, very quickly.

Gardner: The role of compliance requirements has also risen. Are your clients also seeking more security and privacy control around such things as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and nowadays the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

Tools and regulations

Luckey: Oh, absolutely. We provide IT services to a variety of different industries like the financial industry, insurance, and health care. In those industries, they have high regulations and compliance needs, which are growing more and more. But there are also companies that might not fall into those typical industries yet have compliance needs, too -- like PCI and GDPR, as you mentioned.

Gardner: As Jeremy mentioned, speed is critical here. What’s been a challenge for organizations like yours to react to some of these issues -- be it security or compliance?

Luckey: That’s a great question. There are a couple of things. One is technology; having the right technology that fits not only our business needs, but also our clients' needs. That’s a huge impact for us -- being able to provide the right service and the right fit.

But also integration points are important. Disparate systems that don’t integrate well or work well together can be a difficulty for us to service our clients inappropriately. If we have internal chaos, how can we provide a great service to our clients?

The proper progression and adoption of services and solutions is also key. We are in a technological world, for sure, and as technology progresses it only gets better, faster, cheaper, and smarter. We need to be able to use those solutions and then pass along the benefits to our clients.

Gardner: Jeremy, we have been speaking generally about data center services, IT services, but what about the applications themselves? Is there something specific to applications hosting that helps you react more quickly when it comes to security?

Quick reactions

Wiginton: Most assuredly. A lot of things have been getting bloated. And when things get bloated, they get slowed down, and clients don’t want them on their machines -- regardless of how it impacts their security.

So being able to deliver a modern security product that is lightweight, and so fast that the clients don’t even notice it, is essential. These solutions have come a long way compared to when you were constantly doing multiple things just to keep the client happy and having to compromise things that you may not have wanted to compromise.

Gardner: It wasn't that long ago that we had to make some tough trade-offs between getting security, but without degrading the performance. How far do you think we have come on that? Is that something that's essentially solved nowadays?
Being able to deliver a modern security product that is lightweight, and so fast that the clients don't even notice it, is essential. These solutions have come a long way.

Wiginton: For the most part, yes. We have a comprehensive solution, where one product is doing the job of many, and the clients still don't notice.

Gardner: Tell us more, Brian, about All Covered. You have 1,200 employees and have been doing this since 1997. What makes you differentiated in the MSP market?

Longevity makes a difference 

Luckey: We have been around a long time. I think our partnership and acquisition by Konica Minolta many years ago has definitely been a huge differentiator for us. Being focused on the office workplace of the future and being able to have multiple different technologies that serve an organization’s needs is definitely critical for us and the differentiating factor.

We have been providing computing and networking services, and fulfilling different application needs across multiple vertical industries for a long time, so it makes us one of the major MSP and IT players.

Gardner: But, of course Konica Minolta is a global company. So you have sister properties, if you will, around the globe?

Luckey: That is correct, yes.

Gardner: Let's find out what you did to solve your security and performance issues and take advantage of the latest technology.

Luckey: We set out to find a new endpoint security vendor that would meet the high demands of not only our clients, but also our internal needs as well to service those clients appropriately.

We looked at more than a dozen different solutions covering the endpoint security marketplace. Over about six months we narrowed it down to the final three and began initial testing and discussions around what these three endpoint security vendors would do for us and what the success factors would look like as we tested them.


Gardner: As an MSP, you are concerned not only with passing along great security services, but you have to operate on a margin basis, and take into consideration how to cut your total cost over time. Was there anything about the Bitdefender approach that's allowed you to reduce man hours or incidents? What has been impactful from an economic standpoint, not just a security posture standpoint?

A streamlined security solution 

Luckey: Bitdefender definitely helped us with that. Our original endpoint security solution involved three different solutions, including an anti-malware solution. And so just being able to condense those into one -- but still providing the best protection that we could find -- was important to us. That’s what we found with Bitdefender. That definitely saved us some costs from the reduction of overall number of solutions.

But we did recognize other things in choosing Bitdefender, like the reduction of incidents; I think we reduced them by about 70 percent. That translated into a reduction of people and manpower needed to address issues. That, too, was a big win for us. And having such a wide diversity of clients -- and also a large endpoint base -- those were big wins for us when it came down to choosing Bitdefender.

Gardner: Jeremy, we’re talking about endpoint security, and so that means the movement of software. It means delivery of patches and updates. It means management of those processes. What was it about Bitdefender along the logistical elements of getting and keeping the security in place.

Bitdefender definitely helped us. It saved us costs due to the reduction of the overall number of solutions. We had a reduction of incidents, a 70 percent reduction.
Wiginton: Having everything managed, a single pane of glass interface for the endpoint security side, that has saved a ton of time. We are not having to go look in three different places. We are not having to deal with some of our automated things that are going on. We are not having to deal with two or three different APIs to try and get the same information or to try and populate the same information.

We have one consistent product to work with, a product that, as Brian said, has cut down on the number of things that come across our desks by at least 70 percent. The incidents still occur, but they are getting resolved faster and on a more automated basis with Bitdefender than they were in the past with our other products.

Gardner: Brian, where you are in your journey of this adoption? Are you well into production?

Luckey: We are well into the journey. We chose Bitdefender in mid-2016, and we were deployed in January 2017. It's been about a year-and-a-half now, and still growing.

We have grown our endpoints by about 30 percent from the time that we originally went live. Our business is growing, and Bitdefender is growing with us. We have continued to have success and we feel like we have very good protection for our clients when it comes to endpoint security.

Gardner: And now that you have had that opportunity to really evaluate and measure this in business terms, what about things like help desk, remote patch management, reporting? Are these things that have changed your culture and your business around security?

Reporting reaps rewards

Luckey: Yes, absolutely. We have been able to reduce our incidents, and that’s obviously been a positive reflection on the service desk and help desk on taking calls and those type of issues.

For patching, we have a low patch remediation rate, which is great. I’m sure that Bitdefender has been a strong reflection on that.

And for reporting, it's big for us. Not only do we have more in-depth and detailed reporting for our clients, but we also have the capability to give access to our clients to manage their own endpoints, as well as to gain reports on their own endpoints.

Gardner: You’re able to provide a hybrid approach, let them customize -- slice and dice it the way they want for those larger enterprise clients. Tell us how Bitdefender has helped you to be a total solution provider to your SMB clients?

Luckey: Endpoint security has become a commodity business. It’s one of those things you just have to do. It’s like a standard requirement. And not having to worry about our standard offerings, like endpoint security -- we just know it works, we know how it works, we are very comfortable on how it works, and we know it inside and out. All of that makes life easier for us to focus on the other things, such as the non-commodity businesses or the more advanced items like security information management (SIM) and manage unified threat management (UTM).

Gardner: What now can you do now with such value-added services that you could not do before?

Luckey: We can focus more on providing the advanced types of services. For example, we recently acquired a [managed security services and compliance consulting] company, VioPoint, that focuses solely on security offerings. Being able to focus on those is definitely key for us.

Gardner: Jeremy, looking at this through the applications lens again, what do you see as the new level of value-added services that you can provide?

Fewer fires to extinguish 

Wiginton: We are bringing in and evaluating Bitdefender technologies such as Full Disk Encryption. It has been a nice little product. I have done some testing with it, they let me in on their beta of it, which was really nice. It’s really easy to use.

Also, [with Bitdefender], because there's a lot less remediation needed on security incidents, we have seen a great drop in things like ransomware. As a result, I am able to focus more on making sure that our clients are well protected and making sure that the applications are working as intended -- as opposed to having to put out a fire because the old solution let something in that it shouldn’t have.

Gardner: It’s been great to talk about this in the abstract, but it's very powerful too if we can get more concrete examples.

Do you have any use cases for your MSP endpoint security and management capabilities that you can point to?

When we rolled out Bitdefender to replace older security systems for a client, their business stopped. Malware was newly discovered. The previous solutions did not catch that.
Luckey: The one that comes to mind, and always sticks with me, is a legal client of ours. When we rolled out Bitdefender to replace the older security solutions they had, their business stopped. And the reason their business stopped is there was malware being detected, and we couldn’t find out where it was coming from.

After additional research, we found that their main application to manage their clients and to manage billing -- basically to run their business -- the executable file that they would take and copy and actually install that application on every desktop, that had malware in it.

The previous solutions didn’t catch that. Every time they were deploying this application to new users, or if they had to redeploy it, they were putting malware on every machine, every time. We weren't able to detect it until we had Bitdefender deployed. Once Bitdefender detected it, it stopped the business, which is not good. The better part was that we were able to detect the malware that was being spread across the different machines.

That’s one example that I always remember because that was a big deal, obviously by stopping the business. But the most important part was that we were able to detect malware and protect that company better than they had been protected before.

Gardner: The worst kind of problem is not knowing what you don’t know.

Luckey: Exactly! Another example is a large client that has many remote offices for its dental services, all across the US. Some offices had spotty Internet access, so deploying Bitdefender was challenging until we used Bitdefender Relay. And Relay allowed us to deploy it once to the company and then deploy most of the devices with one deployment, instead of having to deploy one agent at a time.

And so that was a big benefit that we didn’t have in the past. Being able to deploy it once and then have all the other machines utilize that Relay for the deployments made it a lot easier and a lot faster due to the low bandwidth that was available in those locations.

Wiginton: We had a similar issue at a company where they would not allow their servers to have any Internet access whatsoever. We were able to set up a desktop as the Relay and get the servers connected to the Relay on the desktop to be able to make sure that their security software was up-to-date and checking in. It was still able to do what it was supposed to, as opposed to just sitting there and then alerting whenever its definitions became out of date because it didn't have Internet access.

Gardner: Let’s look to the future and what comes next. We have heard a lot about encryption, as you mentioned, Jeremy. There's also a of research and development being done into things like machine learning (ML) to help reduce the time to remediation and allow the security technology to become more prescriptive, to head things off before they become a problem.

Brian, what are you looking for next when it comes to what suppliers like Bitdefender can do to help you do your job?

Future flexibility and functionality 

Luckey: We have already begun testing some of the newer functionality being released to the Bitdfender MSP Cloud Security suite this month. We are looking into the advanced security and ML features, and some new functionality they are releasing. That’s definitely our next approach when it comes to the next generation of the Bitdefender agent and console.

And in addition to that, outside of Bitdefender, we are also expanding the services from our new security acquisition, VioPoint, and consolidating those to provide best-in-class security offerings to our clients.

Gardner: Jeremy, what entices you about what's coming down the pike when it comes to helping to do your job better?

Wiginton: I’m really looking forward to Bitdefender’s Cloud, which allows us a lot more flexibility because we are not having to allocate our own internal resources to try and do the analytics. So their Sandbox Analyzer and things that are coming soon really do interest me a lot. I am hoping that that will further chop down the number of security incidents that come across our desk.

Gardner: What would you suggest in hindsight, now that you have made a big transition from multiple security providers to more of a consolidated comprehensive approach? What have you learned that you could share with others who are maybe not quite as far along in the journey as you?

Testing, testing

Luckey: Number one is testing. We did a pretty good job of testing. We took a three-pronged approach of internal, external, and then semi-internal, so our help desk folks. Make sure that you have a comprehensive test plan to test out how many bad guys are being protected, what kind of malware is being blocked, and the functionality. That's the big one … test, test, and test some more.

Choosing the right partner and the right vendor, if you will, is key. I believe in having partners instead of just vendors; vendors just supply products, but partners work together to be successful.

It’s kind of like dating, date the right partner until you find the right one -- and Bitdefender has definitely been a great partner for us.

Otherwise, have your requirements set up for what success looks like, those are all important. But the testing -- and making sure you find the right partner – those were key for us. Once we knew what we wanted, the rest of it fell into place.

It's kind of like dating. Date the partners until you find the right one -- and Bitdefender has definitely been a great partner for us. Once we knew what we wanted, the rest fell into place.
Gardner: Jeremy, from your perspective, what advice could you give others who are just starting out?

Wiginton: Make sure that you are as thorough as possible in your testing, and get it done sooner rather later. The longer you wait, the more advanced threats are going to be out there and the less likely you are going to catch them on an older solution. Do your homework and you have to be on the ball with it.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. You have been listening to a sponsored BriefingsDirect discussion on how small to medium-sized businesses have increasingly turned to managed service providers to be among their greatest defenses against the latest security risks.

And we’ve learned how new and increasingly intelligent security technologies from such vendors as Bitdefender are making MSPs more like SSPs for their clients. Please join me now in thanking our guests, Brian Luckey, Director of Managed Services at All Covered in Ramsey, New Jersey. Thank you, Brian.

Luckey: Thanks for having me.

Gardner: And we have been here with Jeremy Wiginton, Applications Administrator at All Covered. Thank you so much, Jeremy.

Wiginton: Thank you, very much.

Gardner: I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing series of BriefingsDirect discussions.

A big thank you also to our sponsor, Bitdefender, for supporting these presentations. A big thank you as well to our audience for joining. Please pass this on to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Bitdefender

Transcript of a discussion on how managed service providers are building better security postures to help small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises best manage and protect their customers’ end devices and workspaces. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Citrix and HPE Team to Make Sense of the Core-Cloud-Edge Architecture

Transcript of a discussion on how Citrix and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are aligned to bring new capabilities to the coalescing architectures around data center core, hybrid cloud, and edge computing.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile appDownload the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

Gardner
One of the key elements of digital transformation is aligning the core, cloud, and edge using new architectures and efficiencies. New levels of simplicity are needed to satisfy the requirements of both the end user and IT operators.

The next BriefingsDirect IT solutions ecosystem profile interview examines how Citrix and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) are specifically aligned to help bring such digital transformation benefits to market.

To learn more about the venerable and always-innovative Citrix-HPE partnership, we are now joined by executives from these two key enterprise IT players. Please join me in welcoming Jim Luna, Senior Director for Global Alliances at Citrix. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Luna: Thanks, good to be here.

Gardner: We’re also here with Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Global Alliances at HPE. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Carlat: Good to see you again, Dana.

Gardner: Jim, what trends are driving the need for innovation around mobile workspaces?

Luna
Luna: As customers embark through digital transformation they still need to access their apps, data, and desktops from anywhere. With the advent of 5G wireless, and new network connectivity, we need to allow customers to be able to get their data and apps from any device as well. So we see a transformation in the marketplace.

Carlat: We are also looking at a new workforce coming in, the millennials, and they realize the traditional way of going to your job is totally being changed. To be able to be at work anytime, anyplace, anywhere -- and removing the barriers of where work is – that is driving us to co-innovate. We are delivering solutions that allow the freedom to be more efficient anywhere.

Gardner: There’s a chicken-and-egg relationship. On one hand, the core, cloud, and edge can work in tandem to allow for safe, secure, and compliant data and applications sharing activities. And that encourages people to change their work behaviors, to become more productive. It’s hard to decide, which is leading which?

Work anywhere, anytime on any device 

Luna: Traditionally, people had a desktop with applications, and they wanted that particular image replicated throughout their environment. But with the advent of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications that are web-delivered, they now need more of a management workspace, if you will, that allows them to work with any type of application -- whether it’s being delivered locally, on-premises, or through a cloud-based SaaS application. Delivering a unified workspace anywhere becomes critical for them.

Carlat: We also have requirements around security -- increasing the security of data and personal files. This forces us to work together, to take that workspace but not have it sitting in a vulnerable laptop left in a Starbucks. Instead that desktop sits back in the comfort and safety of a locked-up data center.

Luna: People want a simple experience. They don’t want a complicated experience as they access their apps and data. So, simplicity becomes key. User experience (UX) becomes key. And choice becomes key as well.
Learn More About
the HPE-Citrix
Strategic Alliance
Carlat: On expectations of simplicity and UX, if I find it hard to log-in to SharePoint I may just give up and say, “Well, I’m not going to be using those services.” It’s so easy to just move to the next item on your list.

Like I said, with millennials, that’s the expectation. It’s a mandatory requirement. If we can’t deliver that ease of experience to them, others will.

Gardner: User expectations are higher. They want flexibility. They want to be more productive anywhere. We know the technologies are available to accomplish this.

What’s holding back organizations from executing? How are Citrix and HPE together forming a whole greater than the sum of the parts to help businesses execute on this vision?

Collaborate to simplify 

Luna: Traditionally it’s been the complexity of the deployment of the architecture -- both on the hardware side, as well as on the software side. The things that we are doing together are simplifying that process from a deployment perspective, from a manageability perspective, from a support perspective, as well as the other features of experience, security, and choice.

We are working to simplify the experience -- not just in terms of managing and deploying, but also to make sure that that end-user experience is simplified as well.

Gardner: Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has been around for some time, but earlier there were issues around network capacity, and certain media formats lagged. These performance issues have been largely put to rest. How does that factor into accelerating mobile workspaces adoption?

Carlat
Carlat: In the 22 years of my IT experience at Compaq and HPE, I’ve seen the processor compute power increase significantly. The network, storage, and other inhibitors, from a technology standpoint, are pretty much gone now.

It moves the problem away from the infrastructure to the complexity issue. How do you unleash that potential in a manner that is easy to consume. That’s the next level.

Luna: One of the other things our partnership allows is more choice. With HPE infrastructure, we have a variety of different choices available to customers, according to their unique requirements. There is now choice in terms of the architecture that better suits their deployment requirements.

Gardner: We’ve heard about hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) helping people on deployments. We’ve heard about appliance models. Are these part of that new choice?

Carlat: Yes, that’s why we have come together. We are delivering workspace appliances with Citrix on top of our HPE SimpliVity HCI portfolio.

Not only is a customer going to capture the benefits of everything that’s gone into our SimpliVity HCI platform, but we marry it with the world that Citrix provides for VDI, virtual applications, and mobile desktops.

Luna: On one hand, we’re making it easier for established customers to manage their Citrix environments through a simplified management plane with Citrix Cloud Services. But by having the security of that data sitting locally on a SimpliVity appliance -- that’s really good for customers in terms of data governance, data control, and data security.

But there are other architectures for other segments, like in the financial services industry, where we have trader workstations that provide multi-monitor support and high graphics capabilities. So, choice is key.
By having the security of the data sitting locally on an HPE SimpliVity appliance -- that's good for customers in terms of governance, data control, and data security.

Carlat: Yes, as these traders are executing trades, any latency is going to eliminate your technology from being used. So there are very, very strict in requirements around latency or performance, as well as security. There are also benefits on total cost, space, and being able to deliver a very rich media environment. Sometimes it’s upward of six monitors, they have to be patched into this, too.

Through the capabilities we have coming together – of bridging our leading infrastructure with the Citrix portfolio -- it makes a magical combination that can be easily deployed, and it just works.

Gardner: As I mentioned, we want to provide more simplicity for IT operators. One of the things that Citrix has been working out for years is intelligent network capabilities. How Citrix is addressing simplicity around these requirements?

Cloud-control solutions

Luna: Citrix is moving to a cloud service model where these technologies are available through a cloud-control plane, whether that’s VDI, or gateway-as-a-service, or a load-balancer-as-a-service. All of those things can be provisioned from a central plane, on-premises or on a customer’s device. And those are solutions we can deliver whether it is on a standard HPE ProLiant DL380 server, or whether it’s SimpliVity HCI, or whether that’s on HPE Moonshot or a Synergy composable infrastructure environment. Those architectures simply can be delivered and managed through a cloud service onto HPE infrastructures.

Gardner: We’ve also been hearing about complexity of hybrid IT models. Not only we are asking folks to implement things like VDI in workspaces, but now they have to make choices about private, public cloud, or some combination.

How does the Citrix and HPE alliance help manage the gap between public and private cloud?
Learn More About
the HPE-Citrix
Strategic Alliance
Carlat: We are aligned, HPE and Citrix, in our view of how IT and consumers are going to bridge and use public cloud resources. We believe there is a right mix, a hybrid approach, where you are going to have both on-premises and the cloud.

At HPE we have several tools to help the brokering of applications between on-premises to off-premises. And we provide that flexibility and choice in an agnostic manner.

Luna: We’ve recognized that the world is a hybrid cloud world. The public cloud has a lot more complexity due to the number and choice of public cloud providers. So we are not only driving hybrid cloud solutions -- we also have value-added services such as HPE Pointnext that allows customers to incrementally define their architecture, better deploy that architecture, and better manage those services to allow for a better customer experience overall.

Gardner: We are also thinking nowadays about the edge for many kinds of devices, such as sensors on a factory floor. Is this an area where the alliance between Citrix and HPE can be brought to bear? How does the Internet of things (IoT) relate to what you do?

Explosion at the edge 

Carlat: We see exploding growth at the edge. And we define the edge as anything not in the data center. Increasingly more-and-more of the analytics and the insights will be derived at the edge. We are already doing a lot with Citrix.

A major financial institution with hundreds of thousands of clients is using the edge and our HPE and Citrix technologies together. This market is only going to grow -- and the requirements increase from scalability to usability.

The edge can also be grimy; it can be a very difficult physical environment. We take all of that into account across the whole solution stack to ensure that we are providing the expected experience.

Luna: Performance is key. As we look at the core to edge, we have a distributed model that allows for data to stay as close as possible to that end-customer -- and therefore provide the best performance and experience. And the best analytics.

We must consider, can we grab the data necessary that’s being accessed at that particular endpoint and transmit that data back? Can we provide telemetry to the customer for managing that environment and making that environment even better for the customer?

In our case, the Citrix Analytics Service is part of our offering. To pull that data and serve that up to the customer in a manner that they are able to manage in that environment is a plus.

Analytics offer insight

Gardner: Analytics certainly becomes an important requirement. We have analytics at the edge; we have analytics in the cloud. We are not just talking about delivering apps; we are talking about first managing data -- and then taking that data and making it actionable. How does the data and the data analysis factor into what you are doing?

Carlat: Increasingly we see the shift to a consumption-based delivery of IT.  Our HPE GreenLake services provide capabilities for customers to not be mired in maintaining and monitoring all the infrastructure -- but actually just consume it on an as-needed basis. So that’s a one-key element.

Luna: Citrix is coming out with a Citrix Analytics Service, and we started that with VDI. But now that is expanding across the entire set of product portfolios from ShareFile, to NetScaler, Gateways, Load Balancers, et cetera. The idea is to unify all that data so that it is seamless to the customer. Now, that combines with all the analytics data coming out of the infrastructure to provide the customer with a one-pane-of-glass view.
It all comes down to taking advantage of the technology and progress we have made together to deliver insights and business benefits without jacking up the complexity that acts as a barrier to adoption.

Carlat: Using the data and analytics allow you to derive insights, and more accurate insights. We want to give a competitive leg up to our customers, clients, and partners. Those who have a leg up win more, make more money, are more efficient, and have happier clients. Therefore it all comes down to taking advantage, if you will, of the technology and the progress we have and pushing the edge of that envelope, bringing it into a package that delivers insights and business benefit without jacking up the complexity that makes it be a barrier to adoption.

Luna: You’re really empowering the customer to have better knowledge about their environment. And with better knowledge comes better performance in their manageability overall.

Gardner: Where are organizations leveraging the HPE-Citrix alliance in such a way that we can point to them and say, this is how it works?

Real-world success stories 

Carlat: One example is in engineering design. Imagine the amount of horsepower it takes in workstations to do computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). There’s solids modeling and major computational design elements. To purchase the infrastructure and have it at your desk can be quite expensive, and it can increase security risk.

Citrix and HPE have offerings, combined with our Edgeline and HCI systems, that provide the right experience, and really rich graphics and content. And we are able to provide that securely, with the data contained in a structured environment.

Luna: Another segment is healthcare. Because of HIPAA regulations, Citrix VDI is consumed in many healthcare organizations today, whether it’s large hospitals or clinics. That’s one of the environments where we see an opportunity to deliver on the power of both HPE and Citrix, by allowing that data to be secured and managed centrally yet providing the performance and the access on any device -- whether it’s the patient room, or the doctor’s clinic, or anywhere.

Gardner: Let’s look to the future. As we seek to head off complexity, how will HPE OneSphere bolster your alliance?

Trusted together over time

Luna: We are always looking at innovating together. We are looking at the possibilities for joint work and development. HPE OneSphere presents an opportunity where we provide a single pane of glass view of customers as they look to deploy Citrix workloads. That could be through a central management plane, like OneSphere, or going onto a public cloud and being able to compare pricing and workloads.

It can also be about managing a hybrid cloud through HPE infrastructure, and managing all of that seamlessly, whether it’s in a private-hybrid cloud environment or through a public cloud and providing analytics. So we are continuing to look at those solutions that provide innovation for our customers.

Gardner: Jeff it seems that the opportunity to manage a multi-cloud world is certainly an attractive opportunity for you going out to alliance partners like Citrix.
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Carlat: Yes, exactly. That’s an expectation of what consumers will be moving to in the future. It’s not a one-stop shop. We need to be agnostic. To me, HPE and Citrix are totally aligned to where we see the future going with regards to hybrid cloud. And by first having that commonality of strategy and vision, it just makes is easy to snap our stuff together and create these solutions that are delighting our customers.

Luna: I think at the end of the day our mission is to make Citrix hybrid cloud as best as possible on HPE gear and infrastructure, and that’s what we aim to deliver for our customers.

Gardner: And I suppose it’s important for us to point out that this isn’t a Johnny-come-lately relationship. You have been working together for some time. A great deal of the installed base for Citrix is on HPE kit.

Carlat: Yes, our relationship is built on 22 years of history between us. We’ve been blessed by customers desiring to land their infrastructure on HPE.

We have an installed base out there of customers who have chosen us in the past and continue to use us. For those customers, we want to provide them a seamless transformation to a new generation of architectures. The natural evolution is there for us to harvest, we just have to do it in ways that meet expectations around usability and experience.
A large portion of Citrix customers run today on HPE. That's a testament to the trust and collaboration within the partnership. It's been a good partnership.

Luna: A large portion of our customers today run their Citrix VDI environments on HPE infrastructure. That’s just a testament to the trust and the collaboration within the partnership. We have had innovation together over the years. That’s been collaboration between our teams, as well the leadership, in bringing new platforms and new solutions out to the marketplace. It’s been a good partnership.

Gardner: I’m afraid, we’ll have to leave it there. We’ve been exploring how Citrix and HPE are specifically aligned to help bring digital transformation benefits to the market, and we’ve learned how aligning the core cloud and edge by new architectures and efficiencies is finally being made possible.

So, please join me in thanking our guests, Jim Luna, Senior Director for Global Alliances at Citrix. Thank you, Jim.

Luna: It was good to be here.

Gardner: And Jeff Carlat has been with us. He is the Senior Director for Global Alliances at HPE. Thanks, Jeff.

Carlat: You bet. Thanks, Dana.

Gardner: And thanks as well to our audience for joining this special BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story.

I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews. Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your IT community -- and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile appDownload the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Transcript of a discussion on how Citrix and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are aligned to bring new capabilities to the coalescing architectures around data center core, hybrid cloud, and edge computing. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

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