The story
Founded by Ed Iacobucci in 1989, in Richardson.1
Early history
In 1989, Citrix was founded in Richardson, Texas, by former IBM developer Ed Iacobucci with $3 million in funding. Following the company's initial setup and development, Iacobucci moved the company to his former home in Coral Springs, Florida. The company's first employees were five other engineers from IBM who Iacobucci convinced to join his team. Iacobucci served as chairman of the company, and Roger Roberts became the CEO of Citrix in 1990. Citrix was originally named Citrus but changed its name after an existing company claimed trademark rights. The name Citrix is a portmanteau of Citrus and UNIX.
The company's first product was Citrix Multiuser, an extension of OS/2 developed over two years. Citrix licensed the OS/2 source code from Microsoft and developed its own Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) protocol for Citrix Multiuser. Multiuser allowed multiple users working on separate computers to remotely access software on a server, even from computers that were not built to run OS/2. Three days before the product launched in 1991, Microsoft announced it would be switching from OS/2 to Windows. This change made Multiuser nearly unusable without significant changes to make it compatible with Windows or DOS. In 1991, the company discussed closing, but investments from Intel, Microsoft, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers among others allowed the company to work on a new version of Multiuser.
Multiuser version 2.0 was released in 1992. It was compatible with DOS applications and allowed up to five users. In 1993, Citrix released a new remote applications server, WinView, which could run DOS and Windows applications. By 1994, the company's yearly revenue equaled $10 million.
In 1995, the company launched Citrix WinFrame, a multi-user operating system based on Microsoft's Windows NT. This new product allowed up to 15 users and was the first thin client for Windows.
Rise in popularity
Citrix had its initial public offering in December 1995. On its first day of trading, the company's share price doubled from $15 to $30. During the mid-1990s, Citrix became the leader of its growing industry with very few competitors, and the company's revenues doubled year over year between 1995 and 1999.
After weeks of discussion, Iacobucci persuaded Microsoft to license Citrix technology for Windows NT Server 4.0, resulting in Windows Terminal Server Edition in 1998. This agreement allowed Citrix to keep its position in the marketplace and be NT 4.0 compatible. Citrix also earned $75 million and a royalty arrangement valued at approximately $100 million.
Citrix released MetaFrame 1.0 in conjunction with Terminal Server Edition. Due to weaknesses in Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), Terminal Server Edition worked best with Citrix's ICA protocol which MetaFrame used. This meant that Citrix technology was purchased and installed on most machines that ran Terminal Server Edition.
In 1997, the company opened a new headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It also opened offices in Sydney, London, and Paris that same year.
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In 1998, Mark Templeton became the CEO of Citrix after serving as vice president of marketing. That year, Citrix also licensed its ICA protocol to IBM and Key Tronics. In 1999, Citrix licensed its ICA protocol to Motorola for use in digital wireless handsets.
During 1999, Citrix's thin-client model became a software trend, and the company's customers increased to 15 million. Major clients included Sears, AT&T, and Chevron. In 2000, the burst of the dot-com bubble led to Iacobucci leaving the company and CEO Mark Templeton being demoted to the president and senior executive officer. Templeton was later reinstated in 2001.
Expansion
In 2001, Citrix acquired Sequoia Software Corp. for $185 million. That same year, it released MetaFrame XP, a new platform using MetaFrame technology. MetaFrame XP was later rebranded to Presentation Server, in 2005.
On July 9, 2002, Citrix announced a 10% job cut. At the time, the company employed about 1,900 workers. After the announcement, the stock hit a five-year low.
In December 2003, Citrix acquired ExpertCity, a provider of remote desktop products, for $225 million in cash and stock. The acquisition was the company's largest to date. Citrix gained ExpertCity's existing products GoToMyPC and GoToAssist, and ExpertCity became the Citrix Online division. In 2004, the company introduced Citrix GoToMeeting.
Between 2005 and 2012, the company acquired over a dozen companies, allowing it to expand into new markets. Citrix acquired acceleration hardware maker NetScaler in 2005, which allowed the company to offer optimized application delivery. The company entered the server and desktop virtualization market with the purchase of XenSource in August 2007.
Citrix expanded its cloud and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings in August 2010, with the acquisition of VMLogix. In February 2011, Citrix entered the European Software as a Service (SaaS) market with the acquisition of Netviewer.
In 2007, the company opened a headquarters in Silicon Valley. In 2008, the company rebranded its Presentation Server product line to XenApp. Also in 2008, Citrix announced an expanded alliance with Microsoft on desktop virtualization. On January 29, 2009, Citrix announced that 460 employee positions would be cut, comprising 10% of its workforce. In August 2010, Citrix announced a partnership with Google to bring the company's products to ChromeOS devices. On July 14, 2015, Citrix added full support for Windows 10 to its desktop virtualization products.
In July 2011, the company became an IaaS leader after acquiring Cloud.com, a cloud infrastructure provider, for over $200 million. Citrix began offering VDI-in-a-box to small and medium businesses with the acquisition of Kaviza in May 2011. The company acquired cloud-based file sharing and storage technology through its purchase of ShareFile in October 2011.
In May 2012, Citrix acquired Virtual Computer, a maker of intelligent desktop virtualization. This virtualization technology is used in Citrix's XenClient Enterprise edition. Citrix entered the mobile video and telecom markets in June 2012 when the company acquired ByteMobile. Also in 2012, the company acquired Zenprise. Zenprise's Mobile application management (MAM) technology was released as XenMobile in February 2013.
In January 2014, Citrix acquired Framehawk to improve the delivery of virtual desktops and applications over wireless networks, including cellular, where speed and quality may be poor. In May 2014, Citrix acquired Scalextreme to bolster its cloud capabilities, such as auto scaling, patching, and automation of complex cloud deployments, for its core business units XenDesktop and Xenapp.
On January 29, 2015, Citrix announced that 700 full-time and 200 contractor positions would be eliminated. This was about 10% of its workforce. The cuts were expected to save between $90 and $100 million annually. Two hundred of the layoffs occurred in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the company is headquartered.
The company had 10,081 employees as of February 2015. In December 2015, Citrix employed approximately 9,500 people but noted that its November restructure was due to eliminating nearly 700 full-time jobs. As of December 31, 2021, Citrix had approximately 9,700 employees.
Recent history
Citrix reported a net income of $251.7 million in 2014, down from $339.5 million in 2013. In July 2015, the company announced several changes to its board of directors, including making Robert Calderoni executive chairman and adding Jesse Cohn, a senior partner of activist hedge fund Elliott Management. That same month, the company announced that president and CEO Mark Templeton would retire after a replacement was found. On October 21, the company named its executive chairman, Robert Calderoni, as interim president and CEO.
In January 2016, Kirill Tatarinov, a former Microsoft executive, was named the president and CEO of Citrix and joined the company's board; Calderoni remained executive chairman of the board.
In July 2016, as part of a deal with Boston-based SaaS company LogMeIn, Citrix announced that it had spun off its GoTo product line, which included GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToWebcast, GoToTraining, GoToAssist and GoToMyPC, into a wholly owned subsidiary called GetGo. In February 2017, Citrix completed a merger through which GetGo became a subsidiary of LogMeIn. The transaction was valued at approximately $1.8 billion. In July 2017, David Henshall became the company's CEO.
Also in 2017, Citrix expanded its partnership with Google. In May, Google announced that it would add support on its Chrome web browser, including graphics processing unit acceleration, to run Citrix XenApp. In July, the companies announced that they were working to allow Citrix Cloud to deploy virtualized apps and desktops on Google Cloud.
In October 2017, Citrix told regulators of plans to lay off staff "across most functions" and consolidate offices in the fall of 2017 into 2018. The company carried out layoffs in Raleigh, North Carolina, and office closures in Santa Barbara, California, and Tempe, Arizona.
Citrix unveiled its Citrix Analytics security software at the 2017 Citrix Synergy conference in Orlando, Florida, in May 2017. The software detects and responds to security threats using artificial intelligence.
Citrix then unveiled Citrix Analytics for Performance at the 2019 Citrix Summit conference in Orlando, Florida, in May 2019. The software quantifies user experience for Virtual applications and desktop users and also leverages machine learning to troubleshoot performance issues.
In 2018, Citrix changed the names of some of its products to represent its shift to a cloud operating model. The company stated that it made the name changes to present a unified product line so that end users can create, manage, and deploy workspaces with apps and data from a single console. The company dropped its Xen and NetScaler brand names: XenApp and XenDesktop became Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops; XenMobile became Citrix Endpoint Management; ShareFile integration became Citrix Content Collaboration; XenServer became Citrix Hypervisor; Cedexis became Citrix Intelligent Traffic Management; and NetScaler products kept their identities, but the "NetScaler" brand name was replaced with "Citrix ADC" for Application Delivery Controller.
Henshall stepped down in October 2021, and Calderoni was again named interim CEO.
On January 31, 2022, it was announced that Citrix had been acquired in a $16.5 billion deal by affiliates of Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital. Citrix would merge with TIBCO, a Vista portfolio company to form Cloud Software Group (CSG). In July 2022, Citrix announced that Tom Krause would succeed Robert Calderoni as CEO following the merger. It was also reported that Citrix would go private as part of the deal. As part of the merger, in September 2022, Citrix announced a $4.55 billion-equivalent cross-border term loan to back its $16.5 billion buyout by Vista Equity and Evergreen Coast Capital. Following the merger, the Citrix Hypervisor product-line was spun-off into a standalone business unit under CSG and rebranded as XenServer.
In July 2022, Krause became chief executive officer of the Cloud Software Group After Krause joined Cloud Software group it laid off 15 percent of its employees. A year later it laid off an additional 12 percent.
In January 2025, Krause became involved with the U.S. Treasury Department as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He was assigned as a special government employee to review the federal payment system and was granted limited access as a liaison between the Treasury and DOGE. On February 7, 2025, he was appointed as the Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, succeeding Matthew Garber who had been acting in the role since David Lebryk's resignation. Krause continued to work at Cloud Software Group despite his employment by DOGE, this has been cited as a potential conflict of interest.
From Wikipedia’s article on Citrix Systems, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7