Channel focus: All you need to know about Citrix's partner program

Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the former Citrix Systems has 9000 employees and an estimated 12,330 partners.

In 2022 when taken private, merging with Tibco for $16.5 billion to form the Cloud Software Group (CSG), Citrix took $3.3 billion in revenue: investor website Eulerpool estimates 2025 net income at $790m, up 1.6% on 2024, on total sales of $3.6 billion, comprising 71% workspace tech, 25% networking, and four percent professional services. Recent years saw Citrix's remote access, virtualization, and thin client focus expanded into networking and ultimately consumption-based sales recurring contracts and subscriptions, like so many others.

Incorporated in Delaware in 1989, founded as Citra by IBM developer Ed Iacobucci, today's Citrix is led by co-presidents Hector Lima and Sridhar Mullapudi, then CEO Tom Krause. Ethan Fitzsimons, Citrix SVP of partnerships and commercial sales, helms channels. Resellers include Shi International Corp, CDW, and World Wide Technology.

Key offerings

"Today, we really only functionally do universal, hybrid and multi-cloud or the Citrix Platform license," explains Fitzsimons. Under the hood sit offerings such as Citrix desktop as a service (DaaS), Citrix Cloud for resource connectivity across on-prem, public cloud or hybrid environments, the Citrix Workspace app, Content Collaboration file sync and sharing, and security offerings such as Citrix Secure Internet Access, Secure Workspace Access and Analytics for Security. Also, there's long-time core tenant NetScaler.

"It's really about application delivery," Fitzsimons adds. "A particularly strong opportunity for partners is our acquisition of Unicon - as partners expand the consumption of the technology within the customer, they then receive a greater percentage of rebate."

Recent news:

• First fruits of January's Unicon acquisition include virtualization tooling for avoiding tariff-heavy hardware, as reported in May
• In June, the company officially announced a Chrome Enterprise Premium integration for private web application access. Users won't need VPN nor pricey VDI, says Citrix.
• July saw Citrix welcome post-quantum cryptography (PQC) support for NetScaler and a long-term service release for enhanced Citrix virtual apps and desktops. The former is NIST-aligned and production-ready, the vendor says.

Citrix for partners

Citrix confirmed Arrow as its sole distributor across North America and EMEA in January, in effect from 2 June. A distributor program is retained elsewhere.

Fitzsimons reiterates an ongoing investment in product development, engineering, and support of the suite of solutions available to all channel partners. It's working with Arrow to support and deliver these. "Arrow acts as an extension of us, and this has provided tremendous flexibility for partners in terms and deal structures," Fitzsimons says.

Also, "it's very much about quality over quantity" to ensure customer success. As a result, Citrix's approach entails focusing on a smaller number of "highly qualified, competent and capable" partners.

"Especially when we made that decision that we were no longer going to provide billable services to the market, that meant we were going to rely 100% on our partners to deliver those services to our customers," Fitzsimons says. "One of our greatest strengths is our partner ecosystem."

Before going private, Citrix had been recruiting 1000 or so new partners a year. However, not all those partners succeeded -- and it reduced resources for the rest.

"Our top 150 partners globally have doubled in size from that point in time, a little over 2.5 years ago," Fitzsimons says. "In our fiscal 2024, the channel grew by over a billion dollars."

Further program changes are scheduled for 2026.

Partner programs, tiers, and partner types

• Citrix Ready for strategic partners - vendors like Cisco, AWS and Google.
• Technology partners working with Citrix offerings.
• Citrix ISV program. This is invitation-only, for ISVs or MSPs to host or resell Citrix products.
• Citrix Fusion partner program, with Citrix Fusion Resell and Citrix Fusion Service Provider categories. Tiers are Authorized, Silver, and Platinum.
• Lighthouse Services Partners.]A Fusion Partner Program tier for partners specializing in technical, professional and consulting services but who don't transact the products or solutions, but have an expired Citrix Organizational ID number.
• Citrix Preferred Service Partner (CPSP). A Citrix Fusion partner program designation -- rather than a tier -- for partners assessed as able to showcase that they have the highest level of Citrix technology skills "from a service delivery standpoint", Fitzsimons says. "They will follow one of those other programs here, governance and compliance requirements and so forth."
• Partners of Record designation. This recognizes customer footprint expansion, replacing incentive registration, with some funding on offer.
• Training and certifications.
  • Citrix Certified Associate – Virtualization (CCA-V: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 Administration)
  • Citrix Certified Professional – Virtualization (CCP-V: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 Advanced Administration Exam; Pre-requisite: Pass Citrix Certified Associate - Virtualization Or Pass CCA-V: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 Administration)
  • Citrix Certified Associate – AppDS (Choose either CCA-AppDS: Deploy and Manage NetScaler with NetScaler Gateway or CCA-AppDS: Deploy and Manage NetScaler with Traffic Management)
• - Citrix Certified Professional – AppDS (CCP-AppDS-NetScaler Advance Features (Security and Management) Pre-requisite: Pass CCA-AppDS: Deploy and Manage NetScaler with NetScaler Gateway Or Pass CCA-AppDS: Deploy and Manage NetScaler with Traffic Management.

Further benefits, rewards, and incentives

• Core partner incentives are 100% rebate driven, including base rebate for transacting and additional rebates tied to incentive registration for both providing incremental value and expanding an account footprint.
• Uncapped Strategic Development Funding (SDF) for Platinum partners.
• Digital credentials for Citrix and NetScaler certification
• On-demand training.
• Self-paced online labs.
• Citrix instructor-led courses in virtualization (3 courses) and networking (4 courses).
• Organizations running Citrix applications and desktop virtualization alongside F5 enterprise application delivery (ADC) at the time of writing can be reimbursed for migrating to NetScaler.
• Citrix Referral Partner Program. Rewards for referring Citrix to customers or colleagues.
• Sales and go-to-market kits.
• Citrix co-branding opportunities.
• Deployment guides and validated reference architectures
• Citrix community with TechZone blogs, events, education and other resources.

Sign up and get on board

Fitzsimons suggests connecting with distributor Arrow in the first instance - not least because they currently only add 3-5 new partners in a given year. "Our core focus is really on making the partners deeply invested with us already successful, rather than creating further competition," he says.

Citrix's PartnerCentral hub is here.

For additional support, a list of contacts for partner operations is here or you can interact with the partner support center, including by chat.

A CSG channel operations support FAQ is here.

In addition, specific Citrix, NetScaler and XenServer product documentation and downloads can be found at this link. You may need a Citrix Cloud login, which can be created here.

General support is here.

Problems? Check out this overview.

Lastly, you can talk to Citrix via LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and YouTube.