 Okay, our next guest is from Citrix, have a seat. Tarkin Cocky Glue? Cocky Cocky Glue, okay. Welcome to theCUBE, we are here in live, Director of Services Development, Worldwide Consulting Solutions. So first off, describe the scene for the folks out there who aren't here and can hear the noise in the background. So Citrix has been helping customers with virtualization in the cloud for some time. Obviously you guys power open source clouds. What are the top three things you hear from customers around deploying the cloud? What do you do at Citrix? What's your job? How has the services business changed over the past few years? Obviously cloud has changed the deployments, the kinds of services that consultancies roll out. A kind of a new breed of consultancies emerging, cloud, consultancies you have some new players. Now you've got the big players like CSC and some others out there. What's changing in that business model? It's getting more and more important and looking into that we touch much more in the RT architecture from the network, security and storage. So we need to broaden that part of knowledge and really consider it to provide the service the customer needs. Anything in the business model from your customers that have changed? I mean we talk to CIOs all the time, our research firm, rikibon.org, our partners, they do a lot of research with CIOs and we're hearing from them that their business models are changing and that they're asking the vendors and our consultants to change with them. Are you, what are you seeing on that side of the house? They ask much more from the business perspective. It's not this solely let's say professional service where we're going to go into like providing technology or technical knowledge, but really guidance in means of defining the strategy, like how business and IT aligns very well together and aspects are here for example, like looking to business models, savings, security guidelines, especially also with all the virtualization flexibility being agile. I mean today many many organizations have changes acquisitions and with that they need a totally different approach in IT. We're here from siliconangle.tv in the Cube on the ground live at Citrix Synergy 2011 in San Francisco, California. We're here with Citrix talking about services and consulting. Has the relationship between the vendor, hardware vendor in particular changed over the years between the vendor and the customer? We're usually a big deal. You're an HP shop, you're an IBM shop, you're Oracle shop. Is that changed? Are they more commoditized as virtualization changed all that? That's a good question. Yes, it is moving more into, I think the customer wants a complete solution. So having all the hardware vendors, I mean there's a good hardware vendors out there, customers have the opportunity to leverage. But it's really getting into the direction that they want to leverage like a one stop solution. So meaning like having with the software designed accordingly to kind of really fit into the hardware solution as well. You know everyone in the blog is here, obviously Siliconangle is the leading source tech blog for emerging technology, siliconangle.com. You can find it there for the folks out there. Bloggers love to say things are dead. That's a great headline on blogs. So we've been talking about the desktop, the physical desktop is dead. And that seems to be a theme of virtualization, especially desktop virtualization that, the role of the desktop was a liberating concept 20 years ago. Empowering people to do their jobs with productivity suites, Microsoft. Is the virtual, is the physical desktop dead the idea of a big fat bloated PC? People chained to their desk. It conjures up an image of like really a poor work environment. So is that notion dead? I would say no, not today at least. I mean, there's so many, let's say challenges that needs to be fixed. I mean, for sure virtual desktop gives you the flexibility you need or organizations are looking for just from a management perspective. How do I roll out quickly? Let's say my new application update or source packs and things like that. But still, I mean, you have your tablet, you have your iPhone or like any other device. But I think if you want to work like fully, you still need something like bigger device. I mean, you can do the think line. But I think the point where you need a bigger thing is probably your laptop. I mean, either you have a local install or like for example, you can type one hypervisor to kind of take your virtual desktop with you. But I think there's still work to do to get really, let's say, decouple the desktop from the hardware itself. So kind of a philosophical question for you is, the iPhone changed the mobile landscape forever. And since the iPhone was launched, we've seen Google race in with Android. The smartphone market is now legit, fully growing like crazy, big battlefield there. And certainly that was on the IT's radar. So they, a lot of them stand as in BlackBerry. But we're seeing a silicon angle that it's the iPad that has changed the game. So the question for you is, in the enterprise, how much has the iPad changed the game in IT? From being tech jewelry to a very sexy deployment for CIOs, so it's eye candy on one hand or tech jewelry on the other, to actually a real bonafide platform. Has that, how has the iPad changed that, if any, from your perspective? I think it started off, I would say, I mean, you had always like email access at least with your phone. And then you had your laptop. Now looking into, like you want to have some type of information in between. We had the netbooks still out there, but I think the tablet- The netbooks kind of ho-hum didn't really do much. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I think it turned, or like the tablet PCs, I think it turned into really this easy to handle tablet and portable. And especially I think a good user scenario is like thinking about not only the managers like CIOs, but also like the healthcare area where this makes it more flexible for, let's say the doctors to carry around the information and things like that. So I think it, iPad threw in a new device scenario, which probably was there to some degree, but never reached probably the simplicity they kind of provided. And I think it's a new trend there. What about the real-time aspects of analytics and big data? Are you hearing a lot of customers talk about big data and analytics and real-time? You mean like- Yeah, reporting, data warehousing, business intelligence, those kinds of things. Yeah, I mean, once it's centralized, for example, in our case, it is being leveraged for exactly like that because your application, once centralized, sits very close to the source, meaning the backend. So that definitely speeds up the process of getting to your data instead of pulling it from the data center towards your clients. We're here at SiliconANGLE.com, SiliconANGLE.tv, the worldwide leader in emerging tech coverage. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. We are here at live at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco, California. This is theCUBE, our flagship teleclass where we go out to the events, extract the knowledge from the guests, share that with you, and we're here live talking to Citrix about some of their big announcements and some of their changes. Here talking with Tarkon about services. So the question about Citrix as a company, you guys have been pioneering the desktop, how real is VDI and desktop virtualization? Are we just on another rev of virtualization on the desktop? Is it real this time? It is definitely real. I mean, just to give you an example, what we built here is from a service perspective is with our partners Cisco, Dell, NetApp and EMC and McAfee and other Citrix Ready partners we have here, we actually want to show that how real it is. We have a data center onsite behind glass walls. People can see it and to kind of really show actually it is real, people can come and use any device they have and try out the virtual desks we provide them. We built them for them, optimized with all the applications they need and they can try it out. So it's really touchable, experienceable, it's there. You know, we covered last week or as EMC wrote two weeks ago, we covered the Microsoft acquisition of Skype. So obviously, Skype's got a huge install base, 800 million people registered, Microsoft's hurting, been reeling for over the years, actually sucking wind as we say, but it's kind of a desperation move, but it unifies them. You guys have go-to meeting and have these apps that literally over 100 million people have used at one point. I mean, you're there. So like video collaboration is not new to you. So how is the collaboration market and the work you guys have done over the years, how has the advances in virtualization and cloud changed Citrix's abilities? It means of the collaboration? Yeah, just in general, the app stores are now nomenclature in business parlance where you got, you know, people, the SAP launched the app store last week for enterprise apps and they might even be able to compete with Microsoft. Who knows, we were speculating that. I mean, Citrix seems to be in a good position if this plays out to really go in and change the game. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think just starting from the application virtualization perspective and where we are coming from, I mean, we have definitely a good understanding how it is being done, applying it to the desktop virtualization and the other important areas, I think especially with all the, that's a device we talked about, like tablets, phones, the user experience is getting very, very important. It's not just the IT and I think there's a strong force or a change within organizations that users actually drive what IT needs to support them and just considering that, I think it changes the game. Give some examples of that because we were talking before we started about and with Simon about, this is a user experience computing paradigm where the user experience is at the center of it, they're driving the change. You can give some examples of the end user experience really dictating IT. Yeah, so again, I mean, as I said, we're showcasing here with our data center and we don't give anyone coming here to experience the desktop. We don't give them any device so they can use their own device, showcasing actually, you can bring it to your organization and let's say if it aligns with security guidelines, sure, you need to consider, you can use actually any device so the user has the choice which makes I think the work environment easier. Some people like a Mac, some people like a Windows. So things like that, I think that's what I mean, the user has a choice now what they should use to work. Okay, so I guess the question is, is that on a scale of one to 10, 10 being totally ready, zero being screwed up. Where are your customer base at in terms of adopting some of the new technology you're talking about virtualization, desktop applications, you've got all kinds of cool products on the personal side with GoToMeeting, you've got this things like receivers, you've got the new open stack stuff going on. So you're kind of bridging the people and the personal side with kind of private hybrid clouds and then you've got a lot of public cloud. Where's the marketplace on the integration of all those? Is it a three, is it a two, is it a eight? Where's the readiness on the clients? You can be honest now. Yeah, I can be honest, okay. Don't give us the Citrix shield. I would say, I see, let's say the organization between five and six. Just, I think, I know where, still, why is that? Because they have windows? No, I know still a lot of customers who don't do any virtualization or if anyone virtualized, maybe they virtualized applications. And as I said, it's a new move. I mean, we hear from all analysts, this will be the market, this will be here in 2014. So there are still a lot of things to do. And I think the adoption, personally, I think it will take time, especially with the cloud. Cloud is new and I'm sure anyone you ask here, you will get different, let's say, definitions of cloud too. And just taking that. What's the number one reason or what number one request you're hearing from customers? In terms of their needs, their biggest problem. There's always one room on fire. Is it licensing? Is it cost? Is it like a new feature? It's probably, for now, I mean, especially after Christ, the cost. Cost is one point. Security is another one. And the other thing, especially with changing business quickly, they want to be flexible. Those three items, I see the most coming up at customers, where they want to go. What about this emerging segment around small, medium-sized enterprises? Because that seems to be a really hot growing segment. We heard a lot about it at SAP Sapphire last week. You guys are going to be announcing some things in that area. Why is this area growing so much? Because they're a perfect fit to leverage the cloud technologies or just an underserved market, all of the above. What's your opinion on that? The small, medium business is, in my opinion, a big business area, which wants to kind of benefit also from enterprise technologies. Today, I mean, thinking about the coolest technology, the newest server hardware, the newest technology, is usually in enterprise areas. It is not easy to adapt in the SMB market. And even though, like, let's say, if you look at the large enterprise, the revenue, piece, or contribution overall to the economy is large, but the SMB, just amount of SMB we have out there is just immense. I mean, and that is not covered. So today, with the technology we have, the cloud and things like that, I think SMB market gets an opportunity to join the enterprise type of, let's say, technologies and cost-wise it is also getting very reasonable. Okay, we're here inside theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com, your reference point for emerging technologies. We're putting out hundreds of blog posts a week. We have analysts, we got research, we got data. We have theCUBE, our flagship telecast. We go to the events and talk to the folks on the ground, get the knowledge, share that with you. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. Good luck with your services and your consultants and all your army of services. Thank you.