Citrix Online

The core technologies that would become Citrix Online were originally built by the company Expertcity. Expertcity, Inc. was founded in 1997 by University of California, Santa Barbara professor Klaus Schauser and graduate students Bernd Oliver Christiansen and Malte Muenke. Investors included Sun Microsystems, ZDNet, Bertelsmann Ventures, and Wit Capital.

The company announced a web-based marketplace for technical support services, called Expertcity, in December, 1999. A user of the service would submit a technical support question through a simple webform and receive Dutch auction bids from online experts to resolve the problem. Upon selecting one of the experts, the user would be connected to him via a chat interface and, optionally, via desktop sharing, whereby the expert could see the user's screen and remotely control the user's mouse and keyboard. This "remote desktop" technology formed the kernel of later products for Citrix Online.

Expertcity discontinued their support marketplace service on January 1, 2002 by transferring it to Tech24, Inc. Tech24 subsequently phased out the service and transitioned to phone-based support.

The remote desktop technology behind the support marketplace enabled additional products. June 2000 saw the debut of DesktopStreaming (now GoToAssist), a product that lets companies use desktop sharing for technical support between their own customers and support representatives. GoToMyPC, which allows a user to remotely access his or her own desktop, followed in early 2001.

Since 2009, Citrix Online had several layoffs. That year, following the lead of Citrix Systems, Citrix Online laid off 10% of its employees. In 2014, Citrix Online cut 65 workers, largely concentrated in marketing. In November 2015, Citrix announced plans to spin off its SaaS division, Citrix Online, and cut an unspecified number of employees. Chris Hylen was announced as the new CEO of the spinoff.

In 2018, the entire tech support staff was outsourced to Costa Rica resulting in a large number of US-based layoffs.

Current

GoToAssist (formerly DesktopStreaming) — services for businesses to facilitate remote technical support and monitoring for IT environments

GoToMeeting — collaboration and meetings with up to 250 attendees

GoToMyPC — remote desktop access for individuals and medium & large enterprises

GoToTraining — training and development with up to 200 attendees

In 2003, Citrix Systems acquired Expertcity, then a major player in web-based desktop access, in a transaction valued at approximately $225 million in cash and stock. Expertcity became the Citrix Online division of Citrix and retained many of the key developers of the original company.

At the time of the acquisition, Expertcity was developing GoToMeeting, a product that uses the remote desktop engine to allow multiple users to view and control a single desktop, enabling both collaborative support and collaborative presentations. In 2006, Citrix Online adapted GoToMeeting to support the growing market for web-based training and web-based seminars. The resulting GoToWebinar product and the GoToTraining product that launched in 2010 allow hundreds of attendees to view a single screen and join in a phone conference.

In 2008, Citrix acquired Vapps, Inc., an audio conferencing provider, and created Citrix Online Audio, LLC. Shortly after, they released HiDef Corporate, a flat-rate, hosted audio conferencing service.

In 2010, Citrix acquired Paglo Labs and released GoToManage, an IT management and support tool. GoToManage became part of GoToAssist in 2012.