During the Citrix Converge 2021 opening keynote session, Delivering the workspace – anytime, anyplace, anywhere!, we invited everyone working hands-on with Citrix technology to apply to participate in the public pilot of a new lab program we are creating for the Citrix community.

Access to Citrix products for the purposes of learning and experimentation in a “lab” setting has been one of the most frequent requests from our technical community for some time. The Community and Developer Ecosystem teams at Citrix have been working together for several months to create a low-cost community lab program to meet these needs. We ran an initial private pilot earlier this year with a small, selected audience to validate the approach that we developed; now we are inviting applications for a larger-scale public pilot.

What did Citrix announce?

In the Citrix Converge 2021 opening keynote session, we announced the public pilot of a new community lab program. Applications are now open, and 100 randomly selected participants will gain access to the pilot version of the program, free of charge, for three months in early 2022.

The program will provide access to downloads and lab licenses for a range of Citrix products both on-premises and in Citrix Cloud. You will be able to install selected on-premises products on your own hardware or your virtual machines in the public cloud of your choice. The intention is to combine rich functionality with just enough scale to be useful as a tool for learning and experimentation in a lab setting. The lab licenses will not allow production use.

Who is the community lab program aimed at?

We’re creating this program for our community of admins, developers, engineers, and architects; in fact, everyone working hands-on with Citrix technology. Our intention is that you, as an individual, will be able to subscribe to the program once it is generally available. Your subscription will follow you as you change roles at your current employer or even move to a new employer altogether.

How can I apply for the pilot?

Simply provide your name, company name, and email via this form by November 30. We will randomly select and notify 100 pilot participants in early December 2021. If you want to stay up to date with the program but do not wish to put your name forward for the pilot, please complete that same form, but answer “No” to “I would like to participate in the pilot.”

When will the pilot be available?

We are aiming to provide access to participants in early 2022. We will provide a more detailed schedule to participants soon after we select them.

What will happen after the pilot?

We will review your feedback and implement any necessary fixes or enhancements. We are hoping to make the community lab program generally available later in 2022. We’re looking forward to adding more Citrix Cloud services to the program and using the community lab as a cornerstone of our engagement with you, the Citrix technical community, at Citrix Converge 2022 and beyond.

How can I find out more?

Feel free to email Perrine.Crampton@citrix.com with any questions.