The end of a year is always a great time for reflection. It’s when most folks set New Year’s resolutions, think about what they learned in the past year, or maybe what they’d like to accomplish in the upcoming year.

At the beginning of 2020, I took on a new role in Customer Success and put a bow on my Professional Services career, at least with Citrix Consulting. I wrote up a few things I learned in my 15 years of traveling the world and helping our largest customers deploy Citrix solutions. Documenting those lessons learned was quite cathartic for me, and it helped me quickly transition into my new role.

As we wrap up 2020, I thought I’d take a stab at documenting what I learned during what will likely go down as one of the craziest years of our existence. If you know me or have read some of my posts over the years, I absolutely love a good Top 10 list (exhibit A, exhibit B, and there are many more). But 2020 was certainly “extra” as the cool kids say these days, so I’ve decided to share 10 things I’ve learned this year. There’s a twist, though: About half are related to Citrix/work and the other half are related to, well, other things. I felt like that was the only way to do this year justice. So without further ado, let’s dive in:

  1. The Citrix Automated Configuration tool is much more than just a cloud migration utility as the name implies. Similar to PowerShell DSC, you can use it to achieve “desired state,” export a config to quickly document something, and even migrate from cloud to cloud (think test to prod, for example). If you still have on-prem infrastructure and are wondering how to move to Citrix Cloud, get to know our Automated Configuration tool.
  2. I learned a better way to wash my hands. Seriously, there is science behind it. And while I’m at it, I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about epidemiology and immunology.
  3. Customer Success requires a ton of empathy. I’ve always tried to put myself in my customer’s “shoes” when making important decisions or providing recommendations. I find myself doing that more than ever these days. Oh, and if only your CSMs or CS teams care about adoption, you’re not doing it right.
  4. I learned that two-and-a-half 9s is not good enough and three 9s are much better. Our CloudOps team at Citrix is becoming exceptional at managing our Cloud Services. And a bonus: the Cloud Assurance page within the Citrix Trust Center is a fantastic way to stay “in the know” about where our growing number of Cloud services are deployed.
  5. Joe Exotic’s real name is Joseph Allen Schreibvogel, and the common octopus has three hearts and only lives about one year. (There was a lot of Netflix in 2020.) Furthermore, octopuses now rival cheetahs as my favorite “animal”.
  6. When it comes to scalability or logon times, The Rules of 5 & 10 and 30 still apply today. But the new question I get asked every week now is which cloud instance is best for Citrix. If we’re talking Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops workloads, I still like the compute-optimized F series in Azure or C series in AWS. I also learned that I prefer to scale up versus out. As an example with AWS, that means I prefer something like the ‘c5.4xlarge’ model with 16 vCPUs and 32 GB RAM instead of something smaller like the ‘c5.large’ with only 2 vCPUs and 4 GB RAM. I realize this is somewhat contrary to the cloud architecture model in general, but the math (i.e. the costs) works out and managing less stuff can be priceless.
  7. The Electoral College is much more than just part of the process for selecting the U.S. President. I probably learned this in junior high, but there are 538 actual people who could (in theory) cast unique votes instead of voting in line with the popular/majority vote total of their state. I also re-learned that Nebraska and Maine have unique proportional representation.
  8. Forecast accuracy is arguably more important than making your number. I covered for one of our Sales Directors on parental leave this year, and it enabled me to beef up my sales and forecasting skills quite a bit. I learned that making your number is important, but if your forecast is inaccurate toward the EOQ, you could be due for a talking to.
  9. Humans are incredibly resilient, and Citrites have hidden abilities. (Did you know Dan Feller is getting really good at astronomy, and George Kuruvilla is a music prodigy?) We might not be quite as adaptive as the octopus, but 2020 has taught us we’re tough and we can overcome just about anything. I also learned that my Enterprise Architecture team is an absolute dream to mentor, manage and lead. I’m incredibly fortunate to be a Citrite right now leading a dynamic team of curious, highly intelligent and resilient human beings.
  10. Service Continuity is one of the most important features to ever make its debut in a Citrix product. It will provide LHC-like functionality for our Citrix Workspace service, and I like to think of it as intelligent connection leasing on steroids. We just launched a Tech Preview and you can try it out today. And don’t miss this Service Continuity overview blog post from my Citrix colleague Fernando Klurfan.

So there you have it — another Top 10 in the books. I’m hopeful you enjoyed it and that you have a little time to reflect, too, as we head into the holiday season. Stay safe. Cheers!