Citrix CEO Kiril Tatarinov, at his first Citrix Synergy since taking over the company helm earlier this year, outlined to the company’s customers where he plans to take the company.

LAS VEGAS – At the first day of Citrix’s Synergy customer event, President and CEO Kiril Tatarinov took the stage in the opening keynote to address the top issues on attendees’ minds – his vision for the future and the plan he has to execute on it. This was his first Synergy since his appointment as the company’s permanent CEO early this year, making him an unknown quantity to the audience, which was eager to see how his plan to take the company forward differed from the old Citrix, which had had something of a recent rocky road that had ultimately led to the ouster of longtime CEO Mark Templeton.

“This is a unique opportunity to unveil the new Citrix for you, to help you become the heroes of the digital age,” Tatarinov told his audience. “At Citrix, we believe there is a better way to power the digital enterprise, to ensure reliable access to data anywhere, from any device to any cloud, and a better way to secure it all and provide cybersecurity. Technology must be a great liberator, again.

Tatarinov emphasized the importance of closing what he called the technology-productivity gap, the decline in productivity between 2007-2015 despite the growth in technology, which has led to what analysts estimate at $2.7 trillion dollars worth of unused productivity. Addressing this issue is at the heart of what Tatarinov termed the efforts of the “new Citrix.”

“Our strategy to do this is to build the world’s best integrated technology service for the secure delivery of apps and data anywhere, anytime, for any cloud,” Tatarinov said. “We want to be the world’s best across the spectrum of the technology that we deliver.”

A key part of this strategy, Tatarinov stressed, is Citrix’s completion of the transition it has been engaged in from being a maker of products to a provider of integrated solutions.

“We are in the midst of this transition from being product-focused to being a solutions provider and deliverer of services from the cloud,” he said. “This is the most significant transformation we have ever gone through.”

Citrix announced the integration of some of its solutions areas as part of this transformation.

“We are bringing the portfolio together and demonstrating how the whole of Citrix is better than the sum of its parts,” Tatarinov said. “This is all about being a solutions provider. We are introducing new technology that ties together ShareFile with XenApp and XenDesktop. We have also now integrated Netscaler WAN with XenApp and XenDesktop HDX.”

Tatarinov also touched briefly on some key announcements being made around the core products, including XenDesktop 7.9 and XenServer 7.

“We are announcing support for the revolutionary new Raspberry Pi devices, which can be procured for under $100, making it possible to run Citrix in a cheap environment,” he said.

Tatarinov also spoke about what he described as two very powerful new introductions in the networking space.

“We are introducing NetScaler CPX, a unique form factor which puts NetScaler into the Docker container,” he said. “We are also announcing the new NetScaler Management and Analytics system, which is also truly revolutionary, It provides a tremendous new opportunity for users by providing deeper insights on what’s happening over the wire.”

Tatarinov also announced some significant advancements for ShareFile, which he termed perhaps the least known part of Citrix.

“We are announcing a deeper Integration with Office 365, so you can do online editing in the Microsoft cloud,” he said. “We are also announcing new rights management capabilities, which are not broadly used across enterprise IT, and which this will enable.”

Tatarinov also reaffirmed Citrix’s commitment to the cloud.

“At Citrix we have already started our transformation to the cloud, with Citrix Workspace Cloud announced last year, and also the cloud capabilities of ShareFile, Lifecycle Management, and XenMobile, which 60% of customers are now taking in the cloud.

“We are now making the next bold step towards the cloud,” he added. “We are all-in on the cloud. In the coming weeks and months, you will see the entire portfolio in the cloud, as well as a deepening cloud presence in areas like ShareFile and XenMobile where cloud is already significant.”

Finally, Tatarinov emphasized that Citrix had delivered on something customers had been asking for, the deepening of their relationship with Microsoft beyond the product level to become deeply strategic.

“Many of you have been asking us to focus on our partnership with Microsoft,” he said. “We have partnered with Microsoft for over 25 years, and it would be fair to say that our partnership with them was implemented at a very deep product level. But you wanted to see a more strategic approach involving deploying the latest Microsoft technology. So I am very excited that we are taking this longtime partnership to the next level.”

Tatarinov indicated that these changes will see an alignment of roadmaps for the enterprise mobility suite, for mobile device management and for mobile application management, to make them much stronger for mutual Microsoft and Citrix customers. They are also integrating NetScaler and Azure to integrate identity and networking.

“This is a new Citrix that we are unveiling to the world,” Tatarinov said in closing. “We are back.”