Citrix Systems

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Citrix Systems Inc
Type Public
Founded 1989
Founder(s) Ed Iacobucci
Headquarters Florida
Key people Thomas Bogan Chairman of the Board
Mark Templeton, President & CEO
David Henshall CFO & Senior Vice President
Industry Software
Products Application Delivery Industry, Virtualization Software
Revenue 1.39 Billion USD (2007)[1]
Operating income 202.41 Million USD (2007)[1]
Net income 214.48 Million USD (2007)[1]
Total assets 2.53 Billion USD (2007)
Total equity 1.84 Billion USD (2007)
Employees 4,620 (Dec 2007)[1]
Website www.citrix.com
Citrix System headquarters 1991-1997

Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) is an American multinational corporation with a focus on software and services specialized in virtualization and remote access software for delivering applications over a network and the Internet. Citrix is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the South Florida metropolitan area, and has subsidiary operations in California and Massachusetts, and additional development centers in Australia, India and the United Kingdom.

Contents

[edit] History

Citrix was founded in 1989 by former IBM developer Ed Iacobucci in Richardson, Texas with $3 million in funding. [2] Iacobucci quickly moved the company to Coral Springs, Florida since he lived there when he had worked at IBM. [2]

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 so Iacobucci left. Iacobucci was offered a job at Microsoft as chief technical officer of its networking group but turned it down to start his own company.[2]

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. This was due in part to Microsoft declaring in 1991 that they were not going to support OS/2 anymore.[2]

Roger Roberts was appointed the CEO of Citrix in 1990. Roberts, a Texan, came from Texas Instruments.

From 1989 to 1995, the company did not turn a profit. In 1989 and 1990 there was no income at all.

Between 1991 and 1993, Citrix received funding from both Intel and Microsoft as well as venture capitalists. Without the help of this funding, Citrix would not have survived.[2]

In 1993, Citrix introduced WinView, which provided remote access to DOS and Windows 3.1 applications on a multi-user platform. It became Citrix's first successful product. In 1995, WinFrame, based on Windows NT 3.5, was released. WinFrame was sanctioned by Microsoft and embraced by the enterprise businesses. WinFrame pushed Citrix into having widespread adoption.

As part of these successes, the company went public in December 1995.[2]

[edit] Microsoft relationship

Citrix obtained a source code license to Microsoft's Windows NT 3.51. In 1995, they shipped a multiuser version of Windows NT with remote access, known as WinFrame. This product gained widespread acceptance, and enabled the company to become more profitable.

During the development of WinFrame for Windows NT 4, Microsoft decided that it did not want to license Windows NT 4 source code to Citrix. Not only that, Microsoft threatened to build its own version.[2][3] Citrix and Microsoft entered negotiations about how best to solve this dilemma.[2][3] After negotiations, Microsoft agreed to license Citrix technology for Windows NT Server 4.0, resulting in Windows Terminal Server Edition[4][5]. Citrix agreed not to ship a competing product but retained the right to sell an extension to Microsoft's products, initially under the name MetaFrame. This relationship continued into the Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 eras, with Citrix offering Metaframe XP and Presentation Server. On February 11, 2008, Citrix changed the name of its Presentation Server product line to XenApp.

The core technology that Microsoft did not buy was the ICA protocol. Microsoft derived the work for RDP (T.share) protocol from NetMeeting which was originally derived from a deal with PictureTel (now known as Polycom).[6]

[edit] Acquisitions

[edit] Products

[edit] Current products

[edit] Discontinued products

[edit] References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "CTXS - Citrix Systems, Inc. - Google Finance". http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ACTXS. Retrieved 2008-04-21. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 NetIndustries (2002). "Citrix Systems, Inc. - Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background Information on Citrix Systems, Inc.". NetIndustries. http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/98/Citrix-Systems-Inc.html. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 Maney, Kevin (June 11, 1997). "Tiny tech firm does the unthinkable". USA Today (USA Today). 
  4. Microsoft (1997). "Microsoft and Citrix Sign Technology Cross-Licensing and Development Agreement" (in English). Microsoft PressPass - Information for Journalists. Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/may97/hydrapr.mspx. Retrieved 2008-10-24. 
  5. Jim Freer (1997). "Citrix rebounds -- after a close call with Bill Gates" (in English). South Florida Business Journal. American City Business Journals. http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/1997/06/23/focus6.html. Retrieved 2008-10-24. 
  6. Wiredred.com (2005). "Video Conferencing History" (in English). Video Conferencing History. Wiredred.com. http://www.wiredred.com/video-conferencing-history.html. Retrieved 2008-10-23. 
  7. "Citrix to Acquire DataPac Australasia; Acquisition toAccelerate Citrix Presence in High-Growth Asia-PacificMarket." (in English). Business Wire. 1997. http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-applications-internet/7048546-1.html. Retrieved 2008-10-24. 
  8. Clifford Colby (1998). "Insignia sells off NTrigue" (in English). MacWeek. MacWeek. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MWK/is_n4_v12/ai_20191088/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1. Retrieved 2008-11-05. 
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 SEC (1999). "Citrix Systems Inc 10-Q for 9/30/99" (in English). SEC. http://www.secinfo.com/dS997.63Ky.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-28. 
  10. Tony Smith (July 13, 1999). "Citrix buys ViewSoft". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/07/13/citrix_buys_viewsoft/. 
  11. Citrix press release, 16 February, 2000
  12. Darryl K. Taft (Mar 21, 2001). "Citrix Agrees To Buy Sequoia For $185 Million". United Business Media LLC, ChannelWeb (CRN). http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18821735. 
  13. Stacy Cowley (December 18, 2003). "Citrix buys GoToMyPC maker for $225 million". NetworkWorld, IDG News Service. http://www.networkworld.com/net.worker/news/2003/1218citgo.html. 
  14. Paul Roberts (Nov 23, 2004). "Citrix buying VPN company Net6 for $50 million". NetworkWorld, IDG News Service. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2004/1123updat-cit.html. 
  15. Stacy Cowley (Jun 6, 2005). "Gaining speed, Citrix buys NetScaler". NetworkWorld, IDG News Service. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/060605-citrix-netscaler.html. 
  16. Paula Rooney (Nov 18, 2005). "Teros Buy Gives Citrix VARs More Firepower". CRN. http://www.crn.com/security/174400073. 
  17. "Welcome to the Aurema Resource Site". http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=594719. 
  18. Citrix (Aug 15, 2007). "Citrix To Acquire Virtualization Leader XenSource". http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_680809.asp?ntref=hp_promo1_US. 
  19. Sepago (2008). "sepago sells user profile management to Citrix" (in English). Sepago. http://www.sepago.de/citrix/news.html. Retrieved 2008-11-04. 

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