For too long now I have been repeatedly asked by clients if Citrix do a service provider model as the licensing model in place is to cost restrictive for their SaaS and DaaS model, well at long last they have announced this under the guise of Citrix CSP (Citrix Service Provider Program).
The Citrix Service Provider program is tailored specifically for service providers who deliver software services and hosted applications to end-user customers on a rental, subscription or services basis. CSP partners in the program utilise Citrix virtualisation products to deliver their hosted offering. The program is designed with CSPs business goals in mind: simplicity, maximum flexibility, and no up-front license fee commitments. CSPs submit monthly usage reports and are invoiced accordingly.
Joining the CSP is pretty stright forward:
- Do you sell your services to more than one customer / client.
- You must be part of Microsoft’s SPLA program, as without it your Citrix XenApp environment wont fly
- Financial stability with Citrix.
There are licensing options for XenApp, XenDesktop and XenServer offering a true Daas and SaaS model to providers, although there is no SPLA agreement in place for desktops, I am sure that this will happen in the not to distant future with the inclusion of Microsoft VDI technologies in Server 2008 R2.
The CSP license model is different to that of a CCU model, and is based upon a monthly fee for any named user for the month. The licensing model for XenServer and Citrix essentials is also extended with CSP and provides a billing model on the maximum number of virtual machines running at any period in the previous month, which is good news for cloud providers.
Well done Citrix! Need to know more contact us here.