 Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering Citrix Synergy Atlanta 2019. Brought to you by Citrix. Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage, day two of our coverage of Citrix Synergy 2019. Lisa Martin with my co-host Keith Jonesen and we've got another CUBE alumni joining us. Nina Gardner, president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. My language skills are declining on day two. It's been a long day. It has been a long day. Speaking of, I've had a lot of great conversations with Citrix execs, customers, analysts over the last day and a half. People are very excited about what Citrix is doing with intelligent experience and really helping to, businesses to transform their workforces. But you have been following Citrix for a long time. So talk to us about some of the early days back in the 90s. I'd love to get your perspectives on what you saw back then and what your thoughts are about some of the things that they're announcing at this event. Sure, well back in 1995, 1996, the internet was still a new kid on the block and browsers were kind of cool, but how would they ever help a business? And then along comes this company that says, oh, we're not going to deliver things through a browser. We're going to deliver the whole app experience, apps that you're familiar with, your windows-based apps over the wire, over the internet protocol. Wow. So I remember at Internet Expo in New York, at the Javits Center, Ed Aya Kabuchi, the co-founder of Citrix, got up there and explained to how, yeah, we're going to deliver apps. And basically what they were describing was cloud computing as we know it today. Wow. It was very interesting, but we all kind of looked at him like he was a little crazy. Yes. That's been a long time and Citrix has made a name for itself since then, I was talking to David Hensel yesterday and I said, you know what, Citrix is a verb. I'm going to Citrix into an application. They established something for themselves. And ironically on stage yesterday, he said, 85% of the IT budget goes to keeping the lights on. And I would firmly, as pre-keynote yesterday, I say, you know what, Citrix is firmly in that 85% of they are rock fast, hard technology partner, but they're in that 85%, right? This intelligent experience, I think kind of pushes them into that 50% of innovation. What did you think about yesterday's announcements? Well, based on my memory from 1996, I think it's consistent that they're looking for something that's two or three years, maybe more out that will mature then, but they're not afraid of tackling it now. They have some really strong established businesses, but they're not resting on their laurels. They're looking at, I think, a problem that almost everybody can identify with. In the past, there were problems where people they could identify with in IT. The end user wasn't aware that anybody was Citrixing behind the scenes. Now they're identifying issues that people have with work. The fact that we're taking apps and services from multiple clouds, multiple data centers, some of them are owned companies, some of our partners, some across an ecosystem or a supply chain, and it's becoming rather crowded, disenfranchised, fragmented. And people, I think, are struggling to keep up with that amount of diversity. So we're dealing with, yet again, a heterogeneity problem, a reoccurring problem in technology. And Citrix is identifying with something that's a higher elevation than they had in the past. So they're not addressing just IT, although that's where the action is going to take place to solve some of these problems. But they're focused on just about all of us, whether we are working in a small two or three-person mom-and-pop shop or a 30,000-seat enterprise. And they've also done this pivot in the last, what we've heard in the last 24 hours, of really being positioned to the general user. Something that I didn't know until yesterday was that the majority of enterprise software has been designed for power users, which is 1% of the users. And so they really made that positioning pivot yesterday to, this is for the marketing manager, somebody in supply chain who has a day that is bombarded with seven to 10 apps. They're losing hours and hours of productivity a week. You can look at that in terms of the amount of dollars that's being spent or wasted. But really making this, bringing those tasks to the user, those actions to the user, rather than forcing the users to go out to all the different apps, put those pieces together. Oh, and then try to get back to our actual day-to-day function. Right. We wouldn't have to talk about user experience if these things have been designed properly in the first place. It's a bit myopic on behalf of the IT power designer that they often craft the product for themselves. That this is still the dark arts behind the curtain thinking. It's very difficult for a highly efficient, productive IT group to create something for a non-IT audience. And I don't blame them, but it has to happen. And it's going to happen one way or the other. So we've seen companies that have taken extraordinary steps on usability, Apple computers probably the poster child for this, look at where it got them. There are lots of mobile phones around 10 years ago before the iPhone. Why did the iPhone become so popular, so dominant because of the usability? So Citrix is, I think, perhaps doing IT a favor by getting out in front of this. But still, if we're going to get IT in the hands of all people for productivity, what I look to as a fit for purpose mentality, no more, no less, you can't design it as if it's your own baby and your own special design, I don't know, once in a lifetime opportunity to strut your stuff. It has to be fit for purpose, and it can't just be monolithic. We're looking at little bits and pieces. So the Sophos recent acquisition that Citrix made is going to be able to start picking out productivity units for lack of a better term from different applications, assimilate those in an environment, the workspace, where the productivity, the workflow, the goal of accomplishing business outcomes comes first and foremost. So Dana, let's talk a little bit about the next level, because it's broken. Even when you look at modern applications, one of the applications they showed on stage yesterday was a cloud application, Salesforce. We know people who make a good deal of money simplifying Salesforce, which is a born in the cloud application. This isn't just about cloud versus legacy. This is about end user experiences and end users using applications in a way that make them productive. One of the things that caught me as soon as Citrix said that they want to be the future of work, I tweeted out, well, you can't be the future of work unless you start to automate processes and boom, intelligent experience. And the first thing that came to my mind was when we attended an event a couple of weeks ago with the RPA robotic processing, process automation tool that was very user-centric, but used the term bots, robots, software robots that did the job. Citrix only used the term bot once yesterday. What's your sense? Is this a competitive solution to those partners or is this more of a complimentary solution? I think Citrix is correctly trying to keep the horse in front of the cart and not the other way around. We have to look at work as flows of productivity first and not conforming to the app second. But to get out in front and say, oh, it's all going to be automated and the robot will tell you what to do, I think does a disservice. So let's take first things first. But let's not also lose track of the fact that by elevating work to a process and not just being locked into one platform, one cloud, one set of microservices on one framework that we have the opportunity to integrate in analytics along the whole path from beginning to end and that we can even have the context of what you're doing feedback into how the analytics rather come at you and reinforce one another. So we need to get the process stuff set first. We need to recognize that people need to rethink getting off a desktop, getting out of email, looking at the full process, looking at working across organizational boundaries. So extra enterprise, supply chain interactions, contingent workforce. Then bring in analytics. So first things first, but it's going to be a very interesting mashup when we can elevate process, get out of sort of silos, manage that heterogeneity and inject intelligence in context along the way. That changes the game. So if you've seen the workforce dramatically transform throughout your career, there are five generations of people in the workforce today. Madeleine Albright, there she was on stage this morning. 82 years old, I thought that was what an inspiration. But you know, companies have different generations, different experiences, different experiences with technology, differing expectations. What in your opinion did you hear yesterday from Citrix that is going to help businesses enable five different generations to be as productive as they want to be? Right, it's an extension of what Citrix has been doing for decades and it's allowing more flexibility into where you are is accommodated. What device you're using can be accommodated. The fact that you want to be outside your home office but secure could be accommodated. So what I heard was instead of locking in an application mentality where everybody has to learn to use the same app, we need to have flexibility and it's not just ages and generations, it's geographics, it's language, it's culture. People do business and they do work differently around the world and they should be very well entitled to continue to do that. So we need to create the systems that adjust to the people and read the people's work habits and then reinforce them rather than force them into let's say a monolithic ERP type of affair and we've known that a large percentage of ERP projects over the years have failed. And it's not that the technology doesn't work, it's that sometimes you can't put a round peg in a square hole. Well, speaking of round peg square hole, IT, they're preaching to the choir, I think on this piece. We want things to be simpler, we want to get engaged, we want to solve this problem but is Citrix talking to the wrong audience when it comes to process automation? To your point, you have to have the large view of it a lot of times, especially folks at this conference may not have the large view. How does Citrix get to the CMOs, the COO's, the process people versus the technology folks? I think that's a significant challenge, Keith and I recorded a podcast with David Henshel earlier today and it'll be out in a few weeks on Briefings Direct and I asked him that, he said, you're well known in the IT department. They use a verb, they're Citrixing. The end user, not so much. But if you're going to impact work as you intend to it, as you've laid out here at Synergy, you do need to become more of a household word and you need to brand and you need to impact. And we know one of the hardest things to do, excuse me, is to get people to change their behavior. You don't do that behind the scenes. In some ways Citrix has been very modest. They haven't been Citrix inside, they haven't branded and gone to market with, they've usually let their partners like Microsoft and now even Google Cloud put you on the front page even as they're behind the scenes. But I think they need to think a little bit differently. If they're going to impact people, people need to understand the value that Citrix is bringing. But identifying themselves as they have at the show with work and productivity issues, usability and intelligence, will start that process. But I do think they can go further on their go to market and not just bring this message to their sales accounts, but to a larger work productivity, human capital management, enterprise architect type of a base. And they are making those impacts. Keith and I today have already spoken with their three innovation award nominees. There were over a thousand nominations and we spoke with Schroders, which is a wealth management company based out of the UK and how they have enabled a 200 year old company to really transform their culture with Citrix Workspace, was it was done so strategically, so methodically, but how they enabled that and a seamless integration in terms of their customer experience and engagement with their wealth managers was really compelling. Not only are they able to retain their probably long standing wealth management clients, but they have the ability now and the technology capabilities to allow their people to work remote three days a week if they want to or from wherever and actually work on getting new clients. So the business impact was really clear. We also spoke with Indiana University. They have gone from just enabling students on the seven campuses to 130,000 plus across campuses online. They're enabling site impaired people to also via virtualization have access to computer technology. So you're talking about going from tens of thousands to a 10X at a minimum multiplier and enabling professors to have conversations and help classes with people in Budapest. Big impact. So Lisa, you're bringing up the point that user experience isn't just employee experience. It's end user and consumer experience. If you're going to do this and do it right, don't consider it just for your employees. It's for reaching out to the very edge of the markets and that includes consumers and students and mom and pop shops and everything in between. So when you do this right and not only will you be able to bring intelligence and context to your employees, you'll be able to start to better serve your customers. And that's what digital transformation is really about. It is. And it's in the cultural transformation that Citrix is undergoing and that they're enabling their businesses to achieve like the two we just talked about are critical catalysts for digital transformation. But to me, employee experience and customer experience are hand in hand because every employee, whatever function you're in in some way, you're a touch point to the customer. If you're in retail, you're presenting a shoppable moment and as often as you can, but you also are dealing with customers who have choice to churn and go to another provider of that product or service. So having those employees not only be satisfied but have the tools that they need and the intelligence to deliver the content. The intelligence. So I'll be happy to go to a brick and mortar shop. I'll walk in there physically if they can help me in the shopping experience be smarter. But if I can do it online in my bedroom on my browser then I'll do it there. So it's not so much the interface or even the place anymore. It's who's going to give me the information to make the right decision and make me feel confident that I'm spending my money the most productively whether I'm a consumer or a business. So B2B. That's what's going to be the killer app. It's the smart decision making and the experience of bringing the right information right place, right time. That's key and that's what Citrix has repositioned itself for. I think it's really quite a dramatic shift for the company but they've done it before. Well Dana it's been great having you back on theCUBE unpacking this. It's been an exciting day and a half for us and we look forward to having you back on theCUBE sometime soon. My pleasure. For Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Citrix Synergy 2019. Thanks for watching.