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Citrix Systems

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Citrix Systems Inc
Company typePublic Listed Company
IndustrySoftware
Founded1989
HeadquartersFort Lauderdale, Florida
Key people
Mark Templeton, President & CEO
ProductsApplication Delivery Industry, Virtualization Software
RevenueUSD 1.4 billion (2007)
608,808,000 United States dollar (2020) Edit this on Wikidata
USD 215 million[1] (2007)
Number of employees
4600 employees [2]
Websitehttp://www.citrix.com
File:Citrixheadquarters.jpg
Citrix Systems headquarters in Fort Lauderdale

Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS) is a company that sells software and services to optimize and secure delivery of corporate and web-based applications. Citrix specializes in thin client services and remote access software that allow organizations to manage and deliver applications over a network and over the Internet. Citrix is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the Miami metropolitan area, and has subsidiary operations in California and Massachusetts, and additional development centers in Australia, India and the United Kingdom.

Citrix history

Citrix was founded in 1989 by ex-IBM developer Ed Iacobucci. Citrix was originally named Citrus but changed its name after an existing company claimed trademark rights. The Citrix name is a portmanteau of Citrus and UNIX. Many of the original founding members had participated in the IBM OS/2 project. Iacobucci's vision was to build OS/2 with multi-user support. IBM was not interested in this idea; Iacobucci left to form his own company with two partners, who departed shortly thereafter. Citrix was originally headquartered in Richardson, Texas, but within a few months relocated to Coral Springs, Florida.

The company's first product was Citrix MULTIUSER, which was based on OS/2. Citrix licensed the OS/2 source code from Microsoft, bypassing IBM. Citrix hoped to capture part of the UNIX market by making it easy to deploy text-based OS/2 applications. The product failed to find a market, and the company had to adjust their business plan. Citrix devoted considerable resources to identifying the requirements of potential customers and introduced WinView, Citrix's first successful product, in 1993. WinView addressed many customer concerns and saved the company from bankruptcy by providing remote access to DOS and Windows 3.1 applications on a multi-user platform. Citrix obtained a license to all of the source code of Microsoft's Windows NT 3.51, and developed it into a multi-user system which they began to sell in 1995 as WinFrame.

Initial public offering

In 1991, Citrix chairman and co-founder Ron Brittan appointed Roger Roberts as CEO. From 1991 to 1995, the company did not turn a profit. Roberts chose to invest his life savings in the company to keep it solvent and assumed liability for all corporate debts. With less than 30 days of operating funds left, Iacobucci and Roberts were able to convince Microsoft to invest $1 million into Citrix. Had Microsoft not invested in Citrix, the company would have closed.

In December 1995, Citrix went public (CTXS on NASDAQ), with employees of the company holding 30% of the stock. Many employees who invested in the company sold thousands of shares within the first 24 hours and received a profitable return to their investments, as the stock doubled in value on its first trading day. With the success of WinFrame and the momentum behind the increasingly popular Windows NT 3.51 in the corporate software market, the stock and outlook of Citrix became strong.

Ed Iacobucci departs; Mark Templeton resigns and returns

Ed Iacobucci and the Citrix board of directors clashed repeatedly, as he requested more power that the board refused. By 2001, the tension became too great. Iacobucci, recognizing he would never become the CEO, left Citrix [citation needed].

At the same time, the CEO, Mark B. Templeton, stood down and began a search for a new CEO. Ultimately, a replacement was not found and Templeton returned as CEO. This period of the company's history was marked by a rapidly declining stock price, from over $120 USD to around $5.


Microsoft deal and early relationship

Early in 1997, Citrix was again threatened by its success. Microsoft no longer wanted Citrix to ship its version of NT and wanted this software created in-house. As a result, Citrix stock plummeted. Microsoft threatened to create their own independent version of Citrix, withdrew its license of NT 4.0 and formed two teams to create its solution. The first team created an in-house solution and the second team resulted from the acquisition of France-based company Prologue. But the resulting products were inadequate because the graphics subsystem was moved into the kernel in NT 4.0. Microsoft only supported up to 5 users with its solution while Citrix could support more than 180. Citrix's solution was the result of the work of John Richardson, who invented Session Space. Session Space helps isolate and share a range of kernel memory between user sessions in the same way as user mode processes do.

After negotiations, Microsoft agreed to license Citrix technology for Windows NT Server 4.0, resulting in Windows Terminal Server Edition. Citrix was boxed in: if it could not release WinFrame 2.0 based on the NT 4.0 source license, there was no future for the company in this niche. Citrix agreed not to ship a competing product but retained "enterprise-level functionality", which it could sell as an extension to Microsoft's products. This add-on was initially sold under the name MetaFrame. This complementary relationship continued into the Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 eras, with Citrix offering Metaframe XP and Presentation Server. The core technology that Microsoft did not buy was the Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocol. Microsoft bought another company to provide the backbone of the RDP (T.share) protocol that they currently use.


Recent acquisitions and history

In December 2003, Citrix bought Expertcity of Santa Barbara, CA, developer of the Web-hosted portable desktop product GoToMyPC and online meeting platform GoToMeeting, for $225 million, half cash and half stock.[3] Expertcity became Citrix's Citrix Online division.

In November 2004, Citrix bought a San Jose, CA, company, Net6,[4] for a total of $50 million in cash and stock.

In June 2005, Citrix acquired Netscaler,[5] a Santa Clara, CA, company that manufactured network appliances that offered load balancing and application delivery acceleration, for a total of $300 million in cash and stock. Continuing its lengthy buying spree, in November 2005 Citrix bought Teros,[6] a privately-held Sunnyvale, CA firm that produced web application firewalls, for $27 million in cash and stock. The acquisitions allowed Citrix to diversify into the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Virtual Private Network (VPN) market and into Application Delivery solutions. As Microsoft's business partner, Citrix is developing products to link to the Microsoft Active Directory Domain Security Model.

In May 2006, Citrix completed the acquisition of Reflectent, so gaining a product in the end-point management/monitoring market. On August 7 2006 it bought Orbital Data for about $55 million to enter the WAN optimization market. Orbital Data was founded in 2002 and is based in San Mateo, California. In December, Citrix announced an agreement to buy Ardence Inc. enabling on-demand provisioning for application delivery.[7]

In January 2007, Citrix launched the Citrix Ready initiative to identify supported, pre-tested products.

In August 2007, Citrix announced the acquisition of XenSource, developer of the open source virtualization product Xen.[8] The acquisition was finalized October 22, 2007 at Citrix's iForum. In September, 2007, Citrix acquired QuickTree, a small privately-held software company.

Products

Current products

Discontinued products

  • WinFrame
  • MultiWin
  • Citrix MULTIUSER (Based on OS/2 1.x)
  • Citrix WinView (Based on OS/2 2.x)
  • Citrix VideoFrame
  • Citrix NFuse Elite 1.0
  • Citrix Extranet
  • Citrix XPS Portal 3.5.1
  • Citrix MetaFrame Secure Access Manager

References

  1. ^ http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ACTXS
  2. ^ http://www.citrix.com
  3. ^ Stacy Cowley (Dec 18, 2003). "Citrix buys GoToMyPC maker for $225 million". NetworkWorld, IDG News Service.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  4. ^ Paul Roberts (Nov 23, 2004). "Citrix buying VPN company [[Net6]] for $50 million". NetworkWorld, IDG News Service. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  5. ^ Stacy Cowley (Jun 6, 2005). "Gaining speed, Citrix buys NetScaler". NetworkWorld, IDG News Service.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  6. ^ Paula Rooney (Nov 18, 2005). "Teros Buy Gives Citrix VARs More Firepower". CRN.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  7. ^ AP (Dec 20, 2006). "Citrix Announces Agreement to Acquire Ardence Inc. Enabling On Demand Provisioning for Application Delivery".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  8. ^ Citrix (Aug 15, 2007). "Citrix To Acquire Virtualization Leader XenSource".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
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