In episode 332, Douglas Brown interviews Divya Saggar, Senior Manager, IGEL Ready, and Jim Airdo, Vice President of Business Development at IGEL Technology. Together they discuss the new IGEL Ready program, what it is, how it benefits IGEL’s customers, partners and alliance partners, what it takes to get certified IGEL Ready, what’s coming next, and so much more! Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for a story from Doug about meeting Jim back in 2001. It’s a goodie.

About IGEL Ready

IGEL Ready is IGEL’s flagship technology partner program to provide IGEL customers with a partner network supporting “endless possibilities” when it comes to deploying and managing their endpoints at the edge. Formally announced on July 15, the IGEL Ready program already includes technologies from more than 90 companies — including Microsoft, Citrix, and Zoom, and that number is expected to double by 2021.

The program is designed exclusively for hardware, software and peripheral companies that want to develop verified, integrated solutions with IGEL technologies. As a member of the program, you can test and validate your products and solutions to qualify for the IGEL Ready status giving your customers confidence that your offerings work seamlessly with IGEL OS in their environment.

IGEL Ready combines three pillars – our Platform, our Partners, and the Possibilities that we all bring together. IGEL Ready’s mission is to unleash this world of possibilities to revolutionize the secure delivery of cloud workspaces to our customers together with our partners.

IGEL Ready verified products and solutions are featured in the IGEL Ready Showcase — an all-new online portfolio of cutting edge IGEL solutions offered by our ever-growing, best-in-class partner technologies. Find more info at https://www.igel.com/ready/ or write to the IGEL Ready team at ready@igel.com.


About Divya Saggar, Senior Manager, IGEL Ready
 
Divya Saggar is a seasoned alliance professional with a proven record in designing and evolving customer-centric alliance program frameworks that help leading technology companies align their go-to-market strategies with partners at scale. 

Since joining IGEL in March 2020, Divya has been instrumental in driving the successful launch of the IGEL Ready Program, the company’s flagship technology partner program. Divya is leading the IGEL Ready team to guide strategy, planning, and roadmap for the program, and to create an ecosystem where customers can consider compatible devices and applications across a range of categories, quickly deploy to their virtual desktop or cloud workspace, and securely access from any device equipped with IGEL OS. She also designed a new customer and channel facing website, IGEL Ready Showcase, featuring the partners’ joint IGEL solutions that have been validated as a key component of the IGEL Ready program.

Divya’s mission at IGEL is to make IGEL Ready an industry-leading partner program and evolve it into a powerful route to market to drive joint successes of IGEL and its partners. 
 
With over a decade of experience, Divya has held high-impact global roles at leading technology companies including IBM, Citrix, and Softchoice. Passionate about alliances marketing, Divya believes in the “power of partnerships” and loves to work closely with partners for the greater good of the customers.

Divya lives in Toronto with her husband and in her spare time, loves to write about her travel stories and experiences on her travel blog. 


About Jim Airdo, Vice President of Business Development & Alliances

Jim Airdo oversees the fast-growing global ISV & IHV partner ecosystem for IGEL driving increased confidence for customers using multiple hardware and software solutions in accessing their cloud workspaces via the IGEL NextGen Linux operating system.

Mr. Airdo’s longstanding business philosophy has always included a heavy focus on going to market with partners thus his “Partner Led” commitment has led to strong, enduring, trusting relationships with worldwide technology manufacturers, distributors, global systems integrators, and value-added resellers.

Jim brings over 25 years of technology experience to IGEL and has a wide range of industry experience across workspace management, EUC, virtualization, and cloud computing.

Prior to joining IGEL, Jim held executive-level sales and business development leadership roles for innovative software technology companies such as FSLogix, Microsoft, AppSense, BMC Software and he also played a seminal role in the early development of Citrix Systems in building their enviable systems engineering team.

Jim resides in South Florida with his family where he plays hockey, eats sushi, and serves on the board of Live the Life South Florida and Lauderdale Lead.


About Douglas A. Brown

Douglas Brown currently works as the Vice President of Community at IGEL Technology. He is also the Founder of DABCC.com. Doug has more than 25 years of experience in virtualization, cloud, and end-user computing (EUC) technologies and markets.

Prior to DABCC, Doug worked at Citrix Systems, Inc. as a Senior Systems Engineer from 2001 to 2004 where he developed the leading Citrix deployment system, “Methodology in a Box”, which has more than a million users. Additionally, his peers and management at Citrix named Doug Systems Engineer of the Year in 2002. From 2005 to 2016, Doug was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft Corporation for his contributions to the industry. He has also been acknowledged with the Citrix Technology Professional (CTP) and VMware vEXPERT awards for his continued support in the IT community. Doug speaks at leading industry events and has been a prolific author over the past 20 years.

Mr. Brown was awarded a US Patent relating to “social content management”, US#8903912.

Mr. Brown is also the host of the #1 rated virtualization and cloud podcast show, DABCC Radio.

Follow Douglas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/douglasabrown

Connect on LinkedIn here, https://www.linkedin.com/in/dabcc