Citrix Systems
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (February 2008) |
| Citrix Systems Inc | |
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| Type | Public NASDAQ: CTXS |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Headquarters | Fort Lauderdale, 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 Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) is a company that sells software and services specializing in thin clients and remote access software for delivering applications over a network and 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.
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[edit] 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 so Iacobucci left to form his own company.
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. 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, and saved the company from bankruptcy.
In 1991, Roger Roberts was appointed the CEO of Citrix. 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, Microsoft was convinced to invest $1 million into Citrix. Had Microsoft not, the company would have closed.
[edit] Microsoft relationship
Citrix obtained a source code license to Microsoft's Windows NT 3.51. In 1995, they shipped a custom version of Windows NT with remote access technologies, known as WinFrame. This product filled a niche, and enabled the company to become profitable.
During the development of Windows NT 4, however, Microsoft decided that the multiple customized versions of NT were becoming a support nightmare [2]. After negotiations, Microsoft agreed to license Citrix technology for Windows NT Server 4.0, resulting in Windows Terminal Server Edition. 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 bought another company to provide the backbone of the RDP (T.share) protocol that they currently use.
[edit] Acquisitions
- In December 2003, Citrix bought Expertcity of Santa Barbara, CA, developer of the Web-hosted portable desktop product GoToMyPC and online meeting platform GoToMeeting.[3] Expertcity became Citrix's Citrix Online division.
- In November 2004, Citrix bought a San Jose, CA, company, Net6.[4]
- In June 2005, Citrix acquired Netscaler,[5] a Santa Clara, CA, manufacturer of network appliances.
- In November 2005 Citrix bought Teros,[6] a Sunnyvale, CA, producer of web application firewalls.
- In May 2006, Citrix acquired Reflectent.
- On August 7, 2006 Citrix bought San Mateo, CA, based Orbital Data.
- In December 2006, Citrix announced an agreement to buy Ardence Inc.
- In September, 2007, Citrix acquired QuickTree, a small privately-held software company.
- In October 2007, Citrix acquired XenSource, developer of the open source virtualization product Xen.[7]
[edit] Products
[edit] Current products
Citrix has two major product families:
- Citrix Delivery Center (application delivery infrastructure for enterprises)
- Citrix Online Services (online application delivery services for SMB)
CITRIX DELIVERY CENTER
- Citrix XenApp (Application Virtualization - formerly Citrix Presentation Server)
- Citrix XenDesktop (Desktop Virtualization, VDI)
- Citrix XenServer (Server Virtualization)
- Citrix NetScaler (Application Optimization, Application Delivery Networking, Load Balancing, Web Application Acceleration)
- Citrix Workflow Studio (Orchestrates communications between products, IT process automation)
- Citrix Access Gateway (Application Access Security, SSL VPN)
- Citrix Password Manager (Application Security, Single Sign-on)
- Citrix EdgeSight (Application Performance Monitoring)
- Citrix Application Firewall (Web Application Security, Web Application Firewall)
- Citrix WANScaler (Optimizes Application Traffic to Branch Office Users, WAN Optimization)
- Citrix Provisioning Server (Delivers Application Workloads to Physical and Virtual Servers)
- Citrix EasyCall (Integrates voice and click-to-call into any application)
CITRIX ONLINE SERVICES
- Citrix GoToMeeting
- Citrix GoToWebinar
- Citrix GoToAssist
- Citrix GoToMyPC
[edit] 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
- Citrix MetaFrame XP
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d CTXS - Citrix Systems, Inc. - Google Finance. Retrieved on 2008-04-21.
- ^ Sysinternals (2007). Inside Windows NT Disk Defragmenting. Microsoft.
- ^ Stacy Cowley (Dec 18, 2003). Citrix buys GoToMyPC maker for $225 million. NetworkWorld, IDG News Service.
- ^ Paul Roberts (Nov 23, 2004). Citrix buying VPN company Net6 for $50 million. NetworkWorld, IDG News Service.
- ^ Stacy Cowley (Jun 6, 2005). Gaining speed, Citrix buys NetScaler. NetworkWorld, IDG News Service.
- ^ Paula Rooney (Nov 18, 2005). Teros Buy Gives Citrix VARs More Firepower. CRN.
- ^ Citrix (Aug 15, 2007). Citrix To Acquire Virtualization Leader XenSource.
