Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational software company founded in 1989, that provides server and desktop virtualization, networking, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and cloud computingtechnologies, including Xen open source products.

 

Citrix currently services around 230,000 organizations worldwide and is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the South Florida metropolitan area, with subsidiary operations in California andMassachusetts, and additional development centers in Australia, India, Canada and the United Kingdom.

 

Following the acquisition of XenSource, Inc. in October 2007, Citrix spearheads the Xen open source hypervisor project. 

 

 

History

Citrix was founded in Richardson, Texas in 1989 by former IBM developer Ed Iacobucci, with $3 million in funding. Following its initial setup and development, Iacobucci moved the company to his former home of Coral Springs, Florida.

 

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.

 

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 it was no longer going to support OS/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.

 

In 1993, Citrix purchased the product "Netware Access Server" from Novell. It was a remote access application built on DOS and Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager. It provided desktop and applications from the server to multiple users in a similar way Terminal Servers still do. Citrix developed the product further and released it as WinView. It became Citrix's first successful product.

 

The company went public in December 1995.

 

Microsoft relationship

The Citrix and Microsoft relationship is based upon a 20-year alliance, which began in 1989 when Citrix licensed the OS/2 source code.

 

Citrix obtained a source code license to Microsoft's Windows NT 3.51. In 1995, Citrix shipped a multiuser version of Windows NT with remote access, known as WinFrame. This product was a unique offering, targeting the needs of large enterprises.

 

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 of WinFrame. Citrix and Microsoft entered negotiations about how best to resolve this dilemma. 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 derived the work for RDP (T.share) protocol from NetMeeting, which originally derived from a deal with PictureTel (now known as Polycom).

 

In January 2008, Citrix announced an expanded alliance with Microsoft to deliver a set of virtualization solutions to address the desktop and server virtualization markets to ensure broad interoperability between their technologies.

 

In February 2009, Citrix extended its collaboration with Microsoft in the server virtualization market with “Project Encore”. This was heralded by a new product, Citrix Essentials, that offers advanced management for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Joint marketing, training and channel activities were conducted with Microsoft.

 

In July 2009, Citrix and Microsoft announced joint plans to simplify desktop computing by extending their desktop virtualization partnership.

 

These plans included:

• Technology integration so enterprise IT organisations can manage both distributed and centrally hosted applications using Citrix XenApp and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

 

• Extension of XenApp support for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) to enable self-service delivery of applications on any device using Citrix Receiver and Citrix Dazzle

 

Corporate philanthropy

Citrix invests in an ongoing Corporate Giving Program focusing on education, economic development and technology advancement.[12]

In association with US city Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Sister Cities International, Citrix launched the prototype Cyber Sister Cities (CSC) program, with Agogo in Ghana.

 

Acquisitions

• In September 1997, Citrix acquired DataPac for $5 million

• In January 1998, Citrix purchased the NTrigue product from Insignia

• In June 1998, Citrix acquired APM

• In July 1998, Citrix acquired VDOnet for $8 million

• In July 1999, Citrix acquired ViewSoft for $32 million

• In February 2000, Citrix acquired Innovex Group for $48.7 million

• In March 2001, Citrix acquired Sequoia Software Corporation,a Columbia, MD, maker of XML-based portal software.

• In December 2003, Citrix bought Expertcity of Santa Barbara, CA, developer of the Web-hosted portable desktop product GoToMyPC and online meeting platform GoToMeeting. Expertcity became Citrix's Citrix Online division.

• In November 2004, Citrix bought a San Jose, CA, company, Net6.

• In June 2005, Citrix acquired Netscaler, a Santa Clara, CA, manufacturer of network appliances, for about $300 million in cash and stock.

• In November 2005 Citrix bought Teros, a Sunnyvale, CA, producer of web application firewalls.

• In May 2006, Citrix acquired Reflectent. The product Spectacle was then relabeled as Citrix EdgeSight.

• On August 7, 2006 Citrix bought Orbital Data based in San Mateo, California.

• In December 2006, Citrix announced an agreement to buy Ardence Inc., resulting in the product Citrix Provisioning Services.

• In February 2007, Citrix acquired Aurema, developer of a CPU and memory management product,resulting in the addition of a CPU management feature to Citrix's main product XenApp.

• In September, 2007, Citrix acquired QuickTree, a privately held XML and Web Services Firewall company.

• In October 2007, Citrix acquired XenSource, developer of the virtualization product XenServer that is based on the open source Xen Hypervisor. 

• In May 2008, Citrix acquired the sepagoProfile product from sepago.

• In November 2008, Citrix acquired Vapps.

• In August 2010, Citrix acquired VMLogix Inc., a virtualization automation and management company.

• In February 2011, Citrix closes acquisition of Netviewer 

• In February 2011, Citrix acquired Ems-Cortex, Cortex product now sold as CloudPortal Services Manager

• In June 2011, Citrix acquired Kaviza, now resulting in a product called VDI-in-a-box

• In July 2011, Citrix acquired Cloud.com 

• In August 2011, Citrix acquired RingCube

• In October 2011, Citrix acquired ShareFile 

• In October 2011, Citrix acquired App-DNA 

• In April 2012, Citrix acquired Podio 

• In May 2012, Citrix acquired Virtual Computer

• In June 2012, Citrix acquired Bytemobile for $435 million.

• In September 2012, Citrix acquired Beetil

• In December 2012, Citrix acquired Zenprise for $327 million.
 

Products

Current products

• Citrix XenApp (formerly Citrix Presentation Server) provides application virtualization and application delivery.

• Citrix XenDesktop (Desktop Virtualization, VDI)

• Citrix VDI-in-a-Box (Desktop Virtualization, VDI)

• Citrix XenServer provides server platform virtualization.

• XenApp Fundamentals

• NetScaler (Application Optimization, Application Delivery Networking, Load Balancing, Web Application Acceleration, Application Firewall)

• Workflow Studio (Orchestrates communications between products, IT process automation)

• Citrix Access Gateway provides secure remote access to virtual desktops and applications.

• Advanced Access Control is an add-on for Citrix Access Gateway that provides additional control of permissions for users.

• Password Manager (Application Security, Single Sign-on)

• EdgeSight (End User Experience Monitoring)

• Command Center (Citrix products Monitoring tool)

• Branch Repeater (formerly WANScaler) optimizes application delivery to branch office users (see WAN optimization).

• Provisioning Server delivers Desktop workloads to physical and virtual computers.

• EasyCall integrates voice and click-to-call into any application.

• GoToMeeting

• 'GoToWebinar'

• GoToAssist

• GoToMyPC

• XenDesktop – Virtual Desktop Application

• XenServer – Virtual Server Application

• NetScaler App Firewall – Web Application Firewall

• NetScaler Access Gateway – SSL VPN Analog to Digital Converter Appliance

• NetScaler App Delivery Controller – application availability, application and database server offload, acceleration and advanced attack protection

• NetScaler Branch Repeater – WAN Network Optimization

• NetScaler Cloud Connector – End-to-End Acceleration, Encryption and Management of Data warehouse applications

• CloudStack – Cloud infrastructure for enterprises and service providers

• CloudGateway – aggregate and control enterprise applications and services

• CloudBridge – Seamlessly connect your data centre to external clouds

• CloudPortal – Automated operations and business support for cloud providers

• Podio – Collaborative platform for all types of business

• ShareFile – Professional File sharing for desktop and mobile devices

• XenClient – Virtual desktops on the go even when disconnected

• Citrix Receiver – Universal software client for accessing desktop apps and IT services

Further reading: "Product Matrix". Citrix Systems, Inc.

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

• Citrix MetaFrame for UNIX

• Application Firewall (Web Application Security, merged into NetScaler)

Further reading: "Legacy Product Matrix". Citrix Systems, Inc.

 

Company Rating: 3.8

CEO Approval: Mark B. Templeton, 92%

Bottom Line: Citrix has a headquarters in Florida, which is seen as kind of a "podunk" location. But if you can stand working remotely away from the headquarters, the perks are great and the company has a good work/life balance.
 

Employee Feedback:

"Headquartered in Florida sort of podunk mentality compared to other software companies I have worked for. People don't get back to you. Sense of urgency is low."

"Mark Templeton, the CEO, has a charitable and good philosophy about life, and how to run a company."

"Not much to get in the way of pure development, plenty of support, great attitude, amazing work environment, the feeling one can do anything is fostered. Simply put, the best place I've ever worked."