Citrix Support – A new model, a new hope, Citrix Customer Success Services

About two weeks ago Citrix announced part of their new support portfolio for 2017 and beyond, a.k.a. Citrix Customer Success Services. Starting January 1^st 2017 customers will be able to purchase, or better said subscribe to (annually) a new support package named ‘Select’ (as part of the Customer Success Services umbrella) with two more packages following mid-2017 (June / July) referred to as ‘Priority’ and ‘Priority Plus’, although for now there is no detailed information available regarding these two additional packages. Let’s have a look at what we do know.

Today, when you want to be able to leverage Citrix support you will need to have an active Software Maintenance (SM) contract (yes, there are some other support contracts available as well). Not to be confused with Subscription Advantage (SA), which entitles you to directly install and make use of the latest and greatest software when released by Citrix, like XenApp and/or XenDesktop, StoreFront etc. for example.

However, if you have Software Maintenance, Subscription Advantage will be included as well, needless to say that this is the more expensive of the two. When customers purchase a new Citrix product this will automatically include a one year Subscription Advantage membership, which can be renewed as soon as it expires, though it is not mandatory.

Technical Support is available during a product’s Mainstream Maintenance and Extended Maintenance Phases. Once a product version reaches the End of Life date, security related hot fixes, technical support and product downloads will no longer be available. For more information, please review the Citrix Product Support Lifecycle Policy.

With the introduction of Customer Success Services, or more specific the ‘Select’ support package, this will all change. Both Subscription Advantage as well as Software Maintenance will be deprecated throughout 2017 and replaced by ‘Select’. In short, ‘Select’ will include all services offered by SM and SA, plus a whole lot of extra’s.

Let me summarize some of the most important changes, including a couple of remarks and assumptions here and there, that come with the introduction of the Citrix Customer Success Services ‘Select’ support program:

• As of January 1^st ‘Select’ will be officially launched as a new Citrix support offering. However, customers can already contact their Citrix (support) representatives to make us of a so-called early bird discount. Pricing is still unknown at this time.
• ‘Select’ will replace the existing Software Maintenance program, and thus Subscription Advantage as well. It will include the exact same services as the SM support contract plus a whole bunch of additional, potential interesting services — they’re listed near the end of this article.
• Their (Citrix’s) initial announcement states the following: all legacy support contracts (these include Preferred and Enterprise Support) will be non-renewable as of January 1, 2017, and the official retirement date for Subscription Advantage has been set to the 1^st of July 2017. However, the official Citrix Support Programs Matrix states (at least today) that the ‘end of renewal’ date for Subscription Advantage has been set to the 1^st of July 2017. I tend to go with the latter. But don’t take my word for it, make sure to contact your Citrix representative if you have any questions.
• Though non-renewable, all existing (support) contracts (see above as well) will be valid till their agreed upon expiration date. I guess this includes Subscription Advantage as well. No specific (contract) information regarding TRM and/or Assigned Escalation Engineer Services, or any other agreements for that matter, is available at the this time.
• As of January 1^st when purchasing new Citrix software all customers will be required to also purchase a one-year Customer Success Services ‘Select’ subscription, which will be renewable (optionally, not mandatory) on an annual basis. Meaning, Citrix support will now be mandatory for at least the first year. This differs from their current approach where at a minimum Subscription Advantage needs to be purchased, which does not include any support services.
• Since Subscription Advantage will no longer be available and is now part of the ‘Select’ support package, and presumably the upcoming Priority and Priority Plus packages as well, you will (probably) have to keep renewing annually if you want to be able to make use of the latest Citrix software when new editions are released.
• Currently, if you are a LTSR customer you need to have an active SM contract, the same rules will probably apply here as well, you will need to have at least ‘Select’ to be able to keep running an officially supported LTSR XenApp / XenDesktop Site.
• Existing customers can expand on their current deployments (meaning, buy additional licenses for example?) up till the 1^st of July 2017 without the need to purchase, or subscribe to the ‘Select’ support package. After that ‘Select’ will be mandatory as well.
• Priority and Priority Plus will be released on July 1^st No other information is available at this time. Given their names this might include some additional SLA options, or perhaps support on Site, something a couple of my bigger customers have been asking for on multiple occasions. And here I mean dedicated Citrix support engineers employed by Citrix, not their Consultancy Services division, which basically means Technical Consultants from a third party company.
• Some of the additional features and services offered as part of the new ‘Select’ support program include but are not limited to:

1. All services offered by SA and SM like: software updates, including the LTSR, unlimited technical support 24x7x364 in 8 different languages and more.
2. They have decreased the initial response time, from 1 hour down to 30 minutes as part of the new ‘Select’ offering. Support is supposed to be more proactive as opposed to reactive — the way it currently is.
3. Step by step guidance – this will include one-to-one instructions on the installation and configuration of various components. Next to this they also mention ‘Guided Support’ separately, not sure what they mean by this.
4. Proactive and preventive care – using various on-premises and cloud based analytic tools and services. Here Citrix Call Home instantly comes to mind.
5. Learning on the job – to be honest, this is how I like to call it. It involves unlimited access to a comprehensive library of e-learning resources.
6. Live chat – this might be a nice addition depending on how long it takes before someone is available. If I’m not mistaken they have (had) something similar within Insight Services as well, at least in previous versions.
7. Premium Knowledge Center – My take on it: exclusive access to additional knowledge and CTX articles not available on the web (read: Google).
8. Various cloud based services to accelerate and automate version migrations.

Final thoughts

I like it. I do think, however, that care will need to be taken in explaining this new model to partners and customers, existing and new. Citrix will do good by organising a couple of webinars or other online training resources to clear up any misconceptions that might arise over time (I’ve come across a couple already). It involves not only a name change (which Citrix is well-known for, unfortunately) but support has now become mandatory, as opposed to optional like before, though personally I believe this isn’t a bad thing per se.

Also, it will cost a little more (though only when compared to Subscription Advantage) hopefully not too much. The list of additional services offered by ‘Select’ alone is impressive, at least on paper. I am looking forward to the first real-world customers (and their reviews) making use of the live-chat functionality, the e-learning modules, guided support and the quality / potential added value of the Premium Knowledge Center — hopefully I will be able to have a look myself as well. Customers will now have to pay for all these additional features even if they do not (want to) use them, so they better make it good – interesting times ahead.

Bas van Kaam

Field CTO EMEA by day, author by night @ Nerdio

Father of three, EMEA Field CTO @ Nerdio, Author of the book Van de Basis tot aan Meester in de Cloud, Co-author of the book Project Byte-Sized and Yuthor of the book: Inside Citrix – The FlexCast Management Architecture, over 500 blog posts and multiple (ultimate) cheat sheets/e-books. Public speaker, sport enthusiast­­­­­­­­: above-average runner, 3 x burpee-mile finisher and a former semiprofessional snooker player. IT community participant and initiator of the AVD User group Community world wide.