• Thought Leadership
• Oct 8, 2025

The moment it became real for me was two weeks ago in New Orleans, when Citrix CTO Shawn Bass welcomed me on stage at our UNITE conference. I hadn’t even said a word yet—I just stood there, grinning in front of a thousand of my new colleagues, thinking, “This is gonna be awesome!”

As I wrote on LinkedIn when I joined the company, Citrix has been a part of my life for almost 30 years. I first encountered Citrix (WinFrame 1.6!) in the 1990s. I wrote my first blog post, my first book, and gave my first talk about Citrix over 20 years ago. I’ve met the majority of my closest friends via the Citrix community. So being here now is more than just a job for me; it’s truly an honor.

All that said, I didn’t join Citrix because of nostalgia—I joined because of the future.

As I write this in early 2025, we’re on the cusp of the greatest workplace transformation of our lives—bigger than mobility, bigger than SaaS, and bigger than the cloud. AI is changing everything, and the companies that thrive will be the ones who think big, understand how work is evolving, and move decisively.

I came to Citrix because they are doing all three, and I believe this company is uniquely positioned to lead in that new world of work.

In this post, I’ll talk a bit about what I’ve seen and experienced inside the company as one of its newest employees.

The modern workplace is more than Windows

The first thing that struck me is how Citrix is about so much more than VDI now.

Back in 2012, I co-authored a book called The VDI Delusion. Its cover showed a hammer trying to drive in a screw. (Because when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) The point wasn’t to bash VDI, as I’ve always loved VDI when used properly. Rather, the cover image reinforced that VDI isn’t the right solution for every problem, and that we shouldn’t limit our view of what’s possible based only on the tools we already have.

Fast forward to today: I’m a Citrix employee … and I don’t use VDI!

My daily device is a BYO MacBook. My corporate apps are all web-based, which I make feel like native desktop apps by running them as Chrome Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). My laptop is truly “mine” and unmanaged, yet I’m fully secure and compliant thanks to Citrix Workspace and our enterprise browser. For the more sensitive and internal web apps, Citrix Secure Private Access (SPA) provides VPN-less access in the background without me even knowing it.

This setup works perfectly for me in my role, but of course it’s not the right solution for everyone. For many scenarios, VDI is the right choice, and millions of workers rely on Citrix-delivered VDI every day. The Citrix platform lets IT departments adapt the workspace to the worker, instead of forcing the worker to adapt to the workspace. Whether it’s a full desktop session, individual published apps, or local web apps on managed or unmanaged devices, today’s workers can access the right app in the right way at the right time. We have truly evolved beyond the old days of “VDI for everyone.”

AI is entering the workplace, whether companies are ready or not

My first six weeks at Citrix have given me the opportunity to meet with and listen to several customers and partners, and inevitably those conversations veer towards AI and its impact on the workplace. One early takeaway I have is that while everyone agrees the impact of AI will be massive, many leaders are struggling to quantify its value and unsure where and how to invest in an enterprise-wide strategy.

What’s not in question, though, is what’s actually happening in userland: millions of individual rank-and-file employees are discovering and embracing AI on their own. Some use AI to work faster, some to work smarter, and some to work better, but across every industry, workers are increasingly finding AI tools which help them with more of their tasks every day. And of course we’re still in the very early days of this trend. As AI tools continue to improve, workers will incorporate more and more into the fabric of their daily work. Organizations need to figure out how to respond.

We’re building something great

Citrix has gone through a lot of changes in the past few years. But what I’ve seen and felt since joining is that we’re entering this new era with energy, urgency, and vision.

I’ve had more insightful, interesting, and intriguing conversations in the past six weeks than in any other six-week stretch of my career. Everyone I talk to—product, engineering, sales, strategy, customers, and partners—is thinking about what’s next.

We’re building and shipping. We’re integrating new innovations from recent acquisitions like Unicon, uberAgent, deviceTRUST, and Strong Network. We’re continuing to deepen our partnerships (as shown with recent announcements with Google and NVIDIA). And we’re laser-focused on building a modern, flexible, and secure work platform that meets the needs of today and tomorrow.

There’s a startup vibe at Citrix these days. People are fired up. We’re not just delivering desktops and apps—we’re rethinking how work happens and who (or what) is doing it.

Engage!

There’s so much happening that I can’t even begin to cover everything in one post. So this is the first of what will be a weekly series on Citrix.com. I’ll be writing about the future of work, the role of AI, the evolution of Citrix, and what I’m seeing in the industry and from the inside.

You can follow my posts directly by bookmarking my author page (or via RSS), or find me and join the conversation on LinkedIn or Bluesky.

This is gonna be awesome.

Brian Madden

Brian Madden is a VP & futurist at Citrix. He writes about the future of work, AI in the workplace, and the evolution of Citrix.