The importance of not just a partnership, but an ecosystem

By Masako Takagi, April 1, 2021 - Future Workplace • Service Intelligence

Partnerships are an intrinsic part of the technology industry. It’s collaboration between businesses operating in the field and their diverse range of skills and perspectives that often results in innovations which push the boundaries and offer the customer something better.

Belonging to a partnership starts with a business recognizing how another party’s expertise can strengthen your own. To truly put the customer first, you have to outline and act upon where you have gaps in your knowledge.

By consolidating expertise, partnerships are not only more likely to overcome challenges, but also present customers with an all-round stronger solution to their needs.

It’s this train of thought that inspired Fujitsu, Citrix, and Microsoft’s partnership. Each of us contributes experience from our respective fields: service, secure delivery and programs. Through this collaboration we’re able to give our customers one single complete solution, rather than individual parts that they must try integrating themselves.

As such, we believe this partnership to be a real asset for our customers. And this year, our attention has turned to how, together, we can provide solutions to the ongoing disruption of COVID-19, namely, the challenges around working remotely full-time. One of the areas where we think this has been made possible is our collaboration around Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), which we believe has the potential to bolster customers as their employees continue to work remotely, which is something we’ll elaborate on next.

Building an ecosystem around the customer

The purpose of a partnership isn’t just to build a solution, but build an ecosystem which can be adapted to ever-changing customer needs. Citrix, Fujitsu, and Microsoft are able to do this because all three of our individual strategies already have a centralised focus on the customer.

So, at the moment when most of our customers are facing the challenge of digitally transforming their workplace at a colossal speed, this union has the effect of saving them time and effort. They are easily able to implement an end-to-end solution that suits their business in one fell swoop, thanks to the connectedness of our ecosystem.

For example, together we’ve been able to help businesses skip the headaches of integrating and implementing WVD as they continue to develop a remote workplace at pace. Our eco-system has been able to combine Microsoft’s cloud platform, with Fujitsu’s service expertise, and Citrix’s user experience expertise. In turn, the platform can be implemented quickly, can be serviced timely, and remain security-conscious.

As a result, we have been able to omit time-consuming challenges, such as lengthy integration processes, compatibility and cyber-security downtime. To that end, we’ve already seen customers (from universities and government bodies, to energy companies) switch their entire global workforce to digital remote working in a single weekend.

Having continuous access to tools and services means productivity is left less disrupted by the shift to remote working throughout the pandemic.

A futureproofed partnership

We think the seamlessness between Microsoft’s WVD and our expertise and services is a good indicator for the future of the Fujitsu, Citrix, and Microsoft partnership, and we’re excited for customers to see the results.

While our collaboration has targeted helping customers transition to a COVID-affected world throughout the pandemic, we realise the initial disruption has passed and customers are now focusing on the longer term. And the focus of our collaboration has changed accordingly to understand how we can innovate solutions that will help customers build resilience and take on adaptable business models.

We know that despite the many benefits of the ecosystem we can grant customer’s access to, there’s always opportunity for more. More innovation, more benefits, and more long-term resilience. Our ecosystem is ready to provide this.

Uncertain times will always present new challenges, and new challenges result in new opportunities. We hope in the coming months we can prove this statement right.