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As Citrix moves more of its business to the cloud, it’s enabling partners to up their game with the new Citrix Services Delivery Program.

While the vendor announced the new program at Citrix Summit 2017 in January, it officially kicks off today.

“As we’re moving to the cloud, for Citrix, in particular, services are really going to be a big piece of the play for our partners … ” Craig Stilwell, vice president worldwide partner strategy and sales at Citrix, told us. “And, once a customer gets to Citrix cloud, there [are] a lot of services work in maintaining that customer more so than from other SaaS or cloud vendors,” he added.

The program has two components: Services Delivery Kits and Services Delivery Certification.

The Services Delivery Kits are available to all partners. The kits provide partners with Citrix intellectual property (IP) related to delivering a given Citrix solution, i.e. design, implementation or build. The kits include best practices, templates and technical configurations, as well as access to Citrix technical consulting resources.{ad}

“Partners get a couple hours of time per engagement where the Citrix technical folks can help with questions as well as how to navigate the tools in the kit,” explained Stilwell.

The Services Delivery Certification is a differentiator for partners who want to be able to deliver Citrix services at a high level. In addition to getting a Services Delivery Certification badge that can be used for marketing, partners are recognized on the Citrix partner locator — and they have the opportunity to be a part of the Citrix professional services virtual bench.

What this means is that certified partners get to participate in engagements with Citrix consulting, according to the vendor.

“It’s important that we get this right and it’s a big piece of the value proposition for Citrix — whether we’re on premises or in the cloud,” said Stilwell. Partners have historically been a big part of Citrix services delivery.

The certification path is extensive and consists of 10 classes via a self-service or e-learning option, followed by a test. Partners will also have to deliver three projects that will be evaluated by the vendor.

Unlike other technical certifications offered by Citrix, the Services Delivery Certification focuses on professional consulting and project delivery, i.e. best practices, deliverable creation, and solid design principles.

Citrix expects about 5-10 percent of current partners to achieve the new Services Delivery Certification by year’s end.