Top 5 business challenges we heard from customers in 2023

Top 5 business challenges we heard from customers in 2023

This blog was co-authored by Dave Brear, Senior Principal Solution Architect at Citrix.

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2023 was a challenging year for many businesses. Geopolitical instability and financial uncertainty have had broad-reaching implications. Hybrid work continues to evolve, with some businesses returning to office full-time and others adopting partial hybrid schedules. Businesses are also acutely aware of the increased risk of cybercrime. Ransomware and other attacks continue to grow, and IT budgets must now compete with the need for additional security solutions.

Across the globe, these factors have impacted Citrix customers in various ways. In this blog, we’ll review the top five challenges we heard throughout 2023, including security, employee experience, rising costs, IT automation, and operational efficiency. We’ll also highlight Citrix capabilities you should implement to help your business tackle these and new challenges in 2024.

Security

The top concern across industries is security, and for good reason. According to Gartner, the top cybersecurity trend in 2022 was attack surface expansion, partly due to hybrid work settings. Hybrid work and hybrid infrastructure have added complexity for IT as users need access to corporate resources outside of the office. Corporate-managed device programs have become more expensive, and 85% of companies only provide select employees or no employees with devices, meaning employees must bring their own devices. Implementing a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy may be more cost-effective, but it can lead to security concerns and compromised credentials.

Citrix offers numerous features to help make your business more secure. We’ve been providing our customers with tools to implement Zero Trust access to applications for quite some time, and we continue to enhance our security capabilities. Learn more about all the security features that Citrix has launched this year:

Employee Experience

Retaining top talent is a top concern, so providing a high-quality employee experience needs to be a top priority. If your employees work in a hybrid environment or if you have employees in different offices worldwide, you need technology that can deliver applications and desktops anywhere, so your employees stay productive no matter where they are located. Providing a holistic experience for your employees starts with a positive digital experience for all employees, including full-time, third-party, contract, and acquired employees. Positive employee experiences can make a huge difference, especially considering that 50 million workers in the US quit their jobs in 2022.

Citrix can make your employees more productive because it not only delivers crisp audio and video but also quickly gives new employees and contractors secure access to corporate applications. This includes features that help improve the employee experience like those listed below:

• Deliver the highest fidelity user experience (whilst also reducing network bandwidth requirements) with Advanced Video Codec support for HDX.
• Enable access to Citrix Workspace via a company-branded domain name using the Custom Domain feature.
• Arm your admins with an Enhanced Session Experience Metrics Dashboard to proactively identify and troubleshoot user-impacting performance issues. For more information, please visit sintering filter.

Rising Costs

Spending was top of mind for CIOs. In fact, according to a survey conducted by EY, 35% of businesses indicated that cloud and infrastructure costs hindered their digital transformation efforts. Spending concerns have led IT to seek different ways to control expenses, including using hybrid cloud models to avoid vendor lock-in, maximizing existing investments in on-premises infrastructure, and implementing automated controls.

Citrix supports hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and on-premises resources so you can build a cost-effective environment using your existing resources. With support for every major public cloud provider, you can choose the best options for features, price, and more without worrying about integration issues. Your Citrix solution comes with more features to optimize costs, including:

IT Automation

Many businesses continue to prioritize digital transformation and modernization projects. However, IT departments must support everyday operational tasks while deploying new projects. Finding IT talent has also become more challenging, with 41% of CIOs reporting slow hiring for IT roles, 35% reporting a decreased overall IT budget, and 29% reporting an IT hiring freeze, according to a study by Gartner. Many businesses are looking for ways to make staff more productive, but according to research by Gartner, only 9% of IT work is automated or AI-augmented. This means that most IT departments still rely on manual work methods, tying up employees in manual workflows rather than working on value-added projects.

Citrix includes automation features built into some offerings, such as Citrix Autoscale and Machine Creation Services, where you can set up load-based scaling to automatically adjust the number of virtual machines available based on demand. Citrix also offers more features to help you increase IT automation, including:

Operational Efficiency

As environments become more complex, it becomes harder for IT teams to keep operations running smoothly and monitor those environments, especially with the rise in augmented workforces and generative AI. Without oversight into the health of your operations, your business risks unexpected downtime due to operational issues. Streamlining and simplifying operations will help IT increase efficiency across hybrid, cloud, and on-premises deployments.

Citrix offers tools like Citrix Director for agentless monitoring and Analytics for Performance to improve user experience through monitoring and troubleshooting. There are additional features for operational efficiency, including:

• Enable a consistent administrative experience across DaaS and CVAD with the release of Web Studio for on-premises control planes.
• Efficiently manage configuration across multiple CVAD sites using the Citrix Automated Configuration tool, which now supports on-premises control planes.
• Simplify configuration of single sign-on to web and SaaS applications in the Citrix Enterprise Browser using new integration with the Global App Configuration Service.

Optimize Your Citrix Investment in 2024

2023 came with its own unique set of challenges, where organizations had to balance the desire for greater innovation against limited resources in addition to responding to a host of external challenges. Citrix continues to invest in innovative new features that you can adopt today to help you improve security, enhance the employee experience, control cloud spending, increase automation, and improve operational efficiency this year. For more details about these features, check Citrix Product Documentation, or contact your Citrix representative.

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