Microsoft announces partnerships with Citrix, C.H. Robinson focused on Azure

As the digital transformation progresses worldwide, Microsoft today announced that it is expanding its alliance with Citrix and C.H. Robinson to reimagine workspaces across different industries. Both companies are teaming up with Microsoft to help businesses accelerate the adoption of digital workspaces and virtual desktops, and simplify cloud transformation to enable greater agility, productivity, and security.

The new alliance with Citrix builds on Microsoft’s multi-year agreement and strategic partnership. As a part of the new deal, Microsoft will choose the company to be its “preferred digital workspace solution,” and Citrix will move all its users’ on-premises servers to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The partnership will allow both companies to share their tools and technologies to enable a flexible work experience for businesses, combined with offerings of Microsoft’s Azure, Microsoft 365, Citrix Workspace, and more.

Citrix has planned a significant investment to design a Microsoft-centric workspace across its operations, which will provide better functionalities, performance, as well as micro-apps for Microsoft 365 (including Microsoft Teams and Windows Virtual Desktop). In addition, Microsoft and Citrix will now be able to assist businesses looking for alternative solutions to meet their changing business requirements.

“As organizations everywhere adapt to new ways of work, they will need to reimagine how and where work gets done,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Together with Citrix, we will apply the power of Azure to this challenge, helping our customers seamlessly and securely connect their employees to their applications, so they can be more agile and productive wherever they are.”

Moreover, Microsoft is joining forces with a third-party logistics services (3PL) provider C.H. Robinson, with an intention to drive digital transformation across evolving global supply chains by integrating their technologies to accelerate innovation in transportation and make real-time visibility possible in the supply chain industry. The new partnership will combine the power of Microsoft Azure, Azure IoT, and C.H. Robinson’s Navisphere to provide supply chain customers more detailed information about goods as they move through the supply chain.

C.H. Robinson will integrate its real-time pricing, execution, and transportation management tools into Microsoft Dynamics 365 to provide access to these digitally-driven logistics capabilities to Microsoft customers. Both companies emphasized the need to scale and develop new solutions, and the press release notes that Microsoft and C.H. Robinson will collaborate with various Fortune 250 companies.

“We are committed to providing customers with a trusted, easy-to-use platform so they can build seamless, smart and secure solutions regardless of where they are on their IoT journey,” said Sam George, corporate vice president, Azure IoT, Microsoft. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with C.H. Robinson as it transforms the supply-chain industry by leveraging our Microsoft Azure and Azure IoT solutions.”

Microsoft noted that the capabilities will be available to the supplies regardless of their size, and Microsoft will also use the Navisphere platform across its global supply chain, as well.