Brief History
Citrix Systems, Inc. is a Delaware corporation founded on April 17, 1989. They design, develop and market technology solutions that enable secure information technology, or IT, delivery on demand - independent of location, device or network. CITRIX technologies provide value by lowering IT operating costs, increasing information security, and enable greater business agility using Citrix virtual computing technologies. They market and license their products directly to enterprise customers and through systems integrators, in addition to indirectly through value-added resellers, value-added distributors, and original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs.
Strategic Business Overview
According to CITRIX’s Annual Report (2011), for over two decades, CITRIX pursued a long-term vision of enabling people to work or play - from anywhere through successive waves of invention (p. 11). The Annual Report (2011) identified the first wave, beginning in the early-1990s, enabled secure remote access to mission critical applications for users who worked remotely. This required the invention of a new way to transmit screens allowing virtual application hosting instead of installing the program on the end user’s personal computer (p. 11). The Annual Report (2011) illustrated that in the early 2000s, CITRIX turned their focus toward new market opportunities created by the connectivity of the Internet, rapid expansion of network bandwidth, and an increase of device form factors, such as smart phones, tablet PCs and netbooks. These opportunities have been the driving forces behind their second wave of invention, building on their core ideas and technologies for virtualizing applications - extending them to adjacent product and technology markets (p. 11). Since 2004, CITRIX has focused their investments on a broader array of technologies, strategic acquisitions and new business models. This has expanded their core capabilities beyond application
References: Henshall, David J;. (2012). Annual report 2011. Retrieved from www.citrix.com: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CITRIX/2307659569x0x563028/F9FAA6BA-08E8-42DB-AAB3-322D60744A15/Annual_Report_2011_10-K.pdf Hoover. (2013). Citrix systems, Inc. New York. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/