Citrix Holds High Hopes For Brazil

The company expects a three-fold increase in sales by 2018; designs a plan to promote cloud-centric training for resellers.

Citrix will increase channel training in Brazil to support its goal of achieving triple growth in local sales by 2018.

The company's current uptrend in Brazil follows a slowdown that lasted almost three years, according to Citrix Brasil director Luis Banhara.

Currently, the operation of the company in the country works well, especially when compared to more mature markets: annual revenue growth is 20-22 percent, compared to the expansion rate of 16-18 percent It is seen in the United States.

"We have gone through many ups and downs in Brazil since we started operating here 17 years ago, but even in the most difficult times we have never reconsidered our commitment to our local clients and we are here to stay," Banhara told ZDNet.

According to the executive, Citrix desktop and applications virtualization offer continues to lead sales in Brazil, and the software-defined wide area network product (SD-WAN) registers the fastest growth rate in 2017.

This, says Banhara, is due to the positive impact of product productivity in organizations with multiple branches, agencies or stores.

"We believe that in 2018 [SD-WAN] will grow even more as the local economy improves," he adds.

Adapt to local realities

The product launches in Brazil follow Citrix's global plan, despite the adoption delay of approximately 18 months in relation to more developed markets. However, the company has had to adapt its offers to local realities.

"While the conversation with clients in other parts of the world was about reliability and safety, in the last two or three years the Brazilian clients focused mainly on cost reduction," says Banhara.

In the second half of 2017, conversations with local user organizations, particularly in the retail, healthcare and financial sectors, went from being predominantly cost reduction to what can be done to support the return to growth, says Banhara.

"Those wall-to-wall projects that were left in the background in 2014 are now being debated again, and organizations can no longer wait for consumer spending to increase and only act accordingly," he adds.

"Clearly, customers still have to fight for budgets and cost will always be an important consideration, but conversations are no longer about small departmental projects or improvements here and there."

Increasing training

The objectives of Citrix to increase business in Brazil, mainly from cloud-based products, mean that the company will request much more from its 150 channel partners throughout Brazil.

Despite remaining close to its customers, Citrix only does business through its channel of resellers to ensure that the demands of customers throughout the territory of Brazil are met. According to Banhara, these partners must absorb a large number of changes around the new business and technological models that customers demand.

"Customers are asking to migrate to the cloud, which is an outlet for the local products that many have used to sell, there is an adoption curve from the side of our customers, but the same applies to the side of the channel," he says. executive. .

"Some [channel partners]" get "cloud, but there are some laggards who will be left behind, that's life." In order to better prepare the channel to focus on products in the cloud, says Banhara.

The company will increase its training efforts in Brazil, in line with the related initiatives that will be announced at the Citrix Partner Summit on January 8. According to Banhara, it provides training, especially for representatives of channels located far from the company's headquarters in Brazil in São Paulo. It has been challenging at times, due to cultural reasons.

"Something particular in Latin America is that there is a lack of discipline for online seminars and distance learning in general, that's because people perform much better in face-to-face training, they want personal contact," says Banhara. .

The company has already been working on ways to mitigate these problems, such as making training more interactive and offering incentives. In addition, he is making greater use of his own remote monitoring tools to ensure that he is training.

Future plans

Within a year, Banhara expects to be able to report a significant increase in cloud conversion numbers, as well as getting customers to continue updating their products.

"What we see is that [user organizations] talk about new companies that offer supposedly new services, but when we talk to them in more detail we find that they have not got what they needed because they have not updated their product and they have not." Do not get the latest updated features that meet your needs, "he says.

The preparation of the channel is key to avoid such situations, but Banhara does not want to rely on that alone. In addition to training, Citrix is ​​hiring professionals who will act as champions of the company's latest offerings and will work closely with resellers.

"We need the channel to spread the word about the new things we do that could help them achieve their business goals, without making them feel complex," he says.

Despite the challenges that lie ahead, Banhara is optimistic about reaching his growth goals.

"Our multi-cloud strategy resonated very well with our customers. All sales incentives will be cloud-focused next year and we will also be reinforcing alliances, the Microsoft partnership being the main example," the executive adds.

"We are very confident about business in Brazil and it's great to see big clients with very large problems saying that we are a key part of the solution. That's the current moment for us, it's all really exciting."