What other products could Citrix use to drive Platinum license sales like the Comtrade investment?

Recently, Citrix announced an investment they made in acquiring the Comtrade Microsoft SCOM management pack IP, which can be found here. Although I agree with the concept of buying pre-built and working solutions to provide customers with a monitoring pack that works, what I don’t understand is: Why Microsoft SCOM?

 

Is offering SCOM with Platinum Licenses really a Great Value?

In the UK, I don’t see many organizations running Microsoft SCOM, so these packs won’t be a major selling point for Platinum licensing at the moment. I would have preferred that Citrix acquired technology that could be integrated natively into the stack, with an SDK/API for other monitoring tools to plug into, or comes as a prebuilt virtual appliance with plug and play capabilities.

Maybe this acquisition is part of a larger strategy that’s coming with the beast known as Microsoft? Especially since the new CEO of Citrix is ex-Microsoft! Or is this predominantly based on the SCOM presence in the US? (If you’re from the U.S. feel free to comment outlining your thoughts on SCOM and its use across the pond.)

An Opportunity for Citrix sitting on a ‘Platinum’ Platter?

Throwing something out there; a few weeks ago, I wrote an article on the benefits of being able to monitor a Citrix environment from a NetScaler perspective.

If Citrix really wants to drive Platinum licensing sales across the board (XenApp/XenDesktop & NetScaler), why would Citrix not look to partner up with someone like Goliath Technologies for their IT Analytics for NetScaler? For their NetScaler, partnering up with Goliath is same concept as offering the SCOM packs.

#CitrixPartnerLove

To me, partnering with Goliath is less offensive to the Citrix partner ecosystem as there isn’t another solution that I have seen like Goliath IT Analytics for NetScaler. From an outsider looking in, the SCOM pack acquisition could look and sound like there is no other comparable alternative to monitoring your Citrix environment, leaving other partners like Lakeside, Goliath, and ControlUp in the lurch.

Goliath IT analytics for Netscaler enhances the functionality of existing NetScaler Enterprise and Platinum Edition environments by adding functionality like performance analysis, trending, and data exports via API or CSV, and more (read my independent review of Goliath IT Analytics for NetScaler to learn more).

Goliath offers something above and beyond what is currently capable within Citrix Insight Center. The other element for me is, if Citrix procured the rights to integrate this into their Platinum licensing model(s) it could be deployed from a virtual appliance rather than having to utilize/implement a completely separate architecture that may not be in situ.

For me, if Platinum licensing offered these services and more in depth monitoring capabilities, it would be an easier up sell as the uptake of the Insight Center has been slow, from what I have seen. Most discussions I have had with customers has shown this to be due to the very limited historical data Citrix supports. With Goliath’s IT Analytics for NetScaler you can keep unlimited history, so long as you have the resources to support it.

There’s a great use case about a large global retail organization using Goliath is to provide analytics for their Citrix Platinum SDX NetScalers. The use case outlines how Goliath’s solution is monitoring and looking for trends on 10,000 transactions per second, and confirming that web transactions are complete. If there is a failed or slow content search and or transaction you will receive an alert!

In summary and in my opinion, Citrix should do the same with Goliath IT Analytics for NetScaler that they are doing with Comtrade by offering Goliath’s technology to Platinum license holders.

 

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts!