The acquisition of certain Comtrade tools could empower Citrix and Microsoft partners to offer end-to-end monitoring across Citrix desktop virtualization, network and mobility environments.
Indeed, customers and partners can can proactively monitor the quality of the Citrix end user experience and infrastructure health performance across XenDesktop, XenApp, XenMobile and NetScaler, Citrix said. The technology also works with Microsoft System Center Operations Management (SCOM), which should make it appealing to joint Citrix and Microsoft partners.
The acquired Comtrade technology enhances a partner's ability to "deliver 24/7, high availability service with proactive alerting and rapid root cause identification across all Citrix components and dependent infrastructures, ensuring a high-quality mobility experience for end users," the companies said.
The announcement surfaced at Citrix Summit 2016, a customer gathering this week in Las Vegas. Financial details were not disclosed.
Stronger Today Than Yesterday
By selling off the struggling CloudStack-related business and acquiring IT management tools that are core to Citrix's partner and customer base, Citrix has taken two gradual -- but strategic -- steps forward at a critical time.
Shareholder activists have complained that Citrix was focused on too many priorities that are unrelated to one another. The discontent triggered a CEO transition plan in July 2015, and questions about whether Citrix would sell off or IPO its GoToManage and related applications.
No doubt, channel partners and customers crave better management tools for on-premises, mobile and cloud solutions. The tools increasingly stretch from network performance monitoring to application performance management, where startups like AppDynamics and New Relic are in high growth mode.
Citrix still needs to answer a range of questions about who will lead the company, and which products will remain core to the company. But clearly, the commitment to Xen and related management tools is stronger than ever.
