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Citrix Would Be An Attractive Acquisition For SAP, Oracle

Today, businesses are no longer limited to one location or office. Employees need to access data while on the move or even while working from home.

I have recently written several pieces on the Enterprise 3.0 and the Extended Enterprise trend. In this article, I am going to cover a company that aligns well with the trends of collaboration and the Extended Enterprise, a space that has really heated up of late, following Cisco’s acquisition of Webex.

Today, businesses are no longer limited to one location or office. Employees need to access data while on the move or even while working from home. More and more work is being outsourced and there is a need to share and access data and applications throughout the extended e(n/x)terprise.

Citrix (Nasdaq: CTXS) provides this flexibility of working from anywhere while ensuring the security of the data. It provides solutions that can control how users connect and how they access and use applications from various locations. Citrix seems to have cracked the Extended Enterprise phenomenon by extending the enterprise beyond its physical walls.

Citrix provides on-demand applications for remote desktop access, Web conferencing, and online collaboration. Its products include Citrix® GoToMyPC® for secure remote PC access, Citrix® GoToAssist® for live remote support, Citrix® GoToMeeting® for online meetings, and Citrix® GoToWebinar® for Web events. Citrix® GoToWebinar® won the 2006 Frost & Sullivan award for “Best New Web Conferencing Service” along with awards from LAPTOP Magazine Editors’ Choice, TMC Labs Innovation. It also won the 2007 SC Magazine Reader Trust Award for IPSec/SSL VPN Solution.

Though there are numerous competitors for individual Citrix products, as an integrated provider of on-demand access to networks, data, and applications, the company’s position is strong. Citrix has been aggressive in acquiring complimentary technology to maintain its leadership position. Major acquisitions include Expertcity (2003), Net6 (2004), Netscalar (2005), Reflectent (2006) and Orbital Data (2006). In the first quarter of 2007, Citrix acquired Ardence Inc. to improve its application delivery infrastructure for Windows-based applications.

For fiscal year 2006, Citrix reported annual revenues of $1.134 billion, compared to $909 million in 2005, a 25% increase. For fiscal year 2007, the company expects net revenues to be around $1.31 billion. For the first quarter of 2007, Citrix reported revenues of $308 million, compared to $260 million in the first quarter of 2006, an 18% revenue growth.

Its stock has done well, especially in 2007. Its current market cap is $6.19 billion with its stock trading around $34.

Furthermore, SAP and Oracle are 2 large companies in the Enterprise Software space who need a serious collaboration strategy that includes Web Conferencing, Desktop Sharing, and such, and Citrix can be an excellent acquisition for either of them.

Disclosure: Author has no position in CTXS

Yankee Group, Small and Midsized Business Program: “While the benefits of the on-demand delivery model are many for SMBs, one must keep in mind that the solutions must offer applications that provide business value. They must be easy to work with the first time they are used, and available every time they are needed. That’s where Citrix Online excels; they concentrate on delivering a successful user experience which is so critical in the SMB market,” said Gary Chen, analyst at Yankee Group.
— Gary Chen

New Study Reveals Small Business Considers Web Conferencing More Vital than In-Person Meetings for Driving Revenue

Findings Show Immediate Impact on Sales and Marketing in New Wainhouse Research Study Sponsored by Citrix Online

According to a new study from Wainhouse Research, sponsored by Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), Web conferencing is no longer a technical novelty reserved for large enterprises. Simpler on-demand solutions for Web conferencing, such as Citrix® GoToMeeting® and new Citrix® GoToWebinar® are increasingly attractive to small and mid-size companies (SMBs) for a very different reason than their large enterprise rivals.

In a survey of more than 1,500 respondents of which approximately 75% worked at firms with fewer than 500 employees, the Wainhouse Research study has identified how and why smaller organizations use the on-demand model for Web conferencing to gain immediate advantage in the constant battle to achieve bottom-line results with minimal resources.

Unlike large enterprises, these smaller companies report they meet online using Web conferencing more than any other method — including in-person or audio-only meetings — to drive revenue or conduct business. Benefits that are valued most by SMBs include the capacity to quickly scale sales and marketing, and reach global audiences on demand. In fact, a number of respondents indicate that Web conferencing has become so vital that they couldn’t conduct business-as-usual without it.

“Considering that SMBs constitute about 99.7% of U.S. businesses, comprise approximately 44% of the overall U.S. private payroll, and are responsible for more job creation than any other sector of the marketplace, Web conferencing is proving to be a strategic business tool,” reports Alan Greenberg, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research. “Next-generation Web conferencing solutions give SMBs the capability to impact local and global economies as never before possible.”

Survey Highlights:

• “Outbound” Web Conferencing applications that involve customers and prospects are most important to SMBs.
• 75% of SMB respondents believe the ability to involve/reach more people and save travel costs and time are major reasons to use Web conferencing; 59% say it makes meetings more productive.
• 55% of SMBs (and 44% of large enterprise respondents) say that in addition to the more predictable improvements in business practices, Web conferencing enables users to solve problems they could not solve before.
• 69% of all respondents use Web conferencing to enable new meetings that could not be held in any other way due to cost constraints, timing and several other issues.

“The majority of companies polled indicated they are increasing their use of Web conferencing, and are enjoying a high to very high return in value,” said Greenberg. “Though companies of all sizes use Web conferencing to drive business processes, SMBs are much more aggressive in using online presentations and demonstrations to drive marketing and close sales by facilitating meetings with customers and prospects.”

Ease of Use: A Web Conferencing Solution “Must Have”

Because small businesses are often strapped for time and IT resources, the respondents cited ease-of-use as the most important consideration when choosing a Web-conferencing solution. In order of priority, meetings must be easy to start, have superior screen performance, ensure reliability, offer a clear predictable flat-fee model and offer strong security.

“With simpler, better ways to connect to prospects and customers online, businesses can unlock their sales and marketing power to drive the business forward, eliminate the high costs of travel and fuel consumption, and ensure a superior customer experience,” said Mike Mansbach, vice president of product marketing at Citrix Online. “Now, no prospect or client is too far away to reach with just a few simple clicks of the mouse with Citrix GoToMeeting and Citrix GoToWebinar.”

Wainhouse Research and Citrix Online will present a Webinar on the full findings of the survey on August 29, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. PT. To register for the live event, please visit www.gotomeeting.com/s/wainhouse. To view the recorded Webinar on demand, please visit www.gotomeeting.com/s/warchive.

Citrix Online, a leading provider of easy-to-use, on-demand applications for remote desktop-access, Web conferencing and collaboration offers small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and professionals an easier, more cost-effective and secure way to access and interact with information, customers, partners and employees in real time. Citrix Online’s award-winning services, which are used by more than 20,000 businesses and hundreds of thousands of individual subscribers, include: Citrix® GoToMyPC® for easy secure, remote PC access from anywhere; Citrix® GoToAssist® for live, easy remote support; Citrix® GoToMeeting® for online meetings made easy; and Citrix® GoToWebinar® for Web events made easy.
— Alan Greenberg

Chip Gliedman, vice president of Forrester Research, Inc., underscores the value of using remote support solutions such as GoToAssist to enhance service and support. Discussing results from his ITIL processes survey and conclusions in the report entitled, Thirty-One Best Practices for the Service Desk, the analyst notes remote support as key. “Customer service is becoming a differentiator in more industries. When products and prices become similar among competitors, service is the only remaining way for companies to offer a differentiated advantage,” reported Gliedman.
— Chip Gliedman

SSPA Announces “Recognized Innovators” Awards for Technology That Revolutionizes the Way Organizations Serve Their Customers

The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the largest and most influential association for technology services and support professionals, today named the winners of its inaugural SSPA Recognized Innovator program. Product/technology vendors in each of three categories – Technology Innovation, Customer Experience Innovation and Optimization Innovation - have been honored for improving the way companies provide service and support to their customers

The 2006 SSPA Recognized Innovators in the Technology Innovation category are: Citrix Online ...

...According to (Vice President of Research, John) Ragsdale, while many areas of customer service and CRM technology are beginning to mature, a few vendors continue to deliver pure innovative products and services. ...

Technology Innovation. Creating software or hardware that changes the way companies provide support. The companies recognized for Technology Innovation have developed patented technology that solves an old problem in a new way, or provides a solution to an emerging business problem. ...

TripleTree, LLC, a leading investment banking firm dedicated to meeting the needs of technology, healthcare, and business services companies: “Citrix Online and its real-time access and collaboration solutions are among the leaders in the collaboration sector that are paving the way in the Software as a Service sector along with likes of Google, Yahoo and Salesforce,” said sr. principal analyst, Brian Klemenhagen at Triple Tree.
— Brian Klemenhagen

IDC Small Business and Home Office Program: Pointing to the advantages of using Citrix GoToAssist for remote technical support, sr. analyst at IDC, Merle Sandler, stated: “Providing IT assistance to customers or employees can be a major chore for small firms, who are typically resource-constrained and don’t often have full time IT staff. They can really benefit from using the Internet to identify and solve IT-related problems remotely. After all, this delivers ‘big company’ capability, while still providing a more personal and responsive relationship with internal and external constituents.”
— Merle Sandler

In the recently published World Wide Conferencing Report 2006, Frost and Sullivan’s principal Web conferencing and collaboration analyst, Roopam Jain, noted Citrix Online as a key player in the on-demand web conferencing services market. Jain also tapped Citrix GoToWebinar as the Best New Web Conferencing Services Award for 2006. “The division is gaining increasing attention as one of the top five players in the market for its GoToMeeting web conferencing service which is primarily targeted at SMBs. Designed on the ‘simpler is better’ concept, GoToMeeting offers a user friendly interface and feature set. Looking to expand on its GoToMeeting user base, Citrix has introduced GoToWebinar with additional features to support large web events or webinars. The combination of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar coupled with Citrix’s aggressive pricing makes it a strong contender in the web conferencing services market,” reported Jain.
— Roopam Jain

2006 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Best New Web Conferencing Service

Award Recipient: Citrix Online

Award Description

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Best New Service is given to the company that has demonstrated excellence in developing and introducing a new class of service within their industry. This award recognizes the company’s successful introduction of a new solution that has become a part of its well-designed portfolio of offerings. Such innovation is expected to significantly contribute to the industry in terms of performance and degree/rate of technology adoption.

The 2006 Best New Web Conferencing Service Award is presented to Citrix Online for GoToWebinar, a new web event service.

Launched in June 2006, GoToWebinar is a hosted event service purpose-built for do-it-yourself Webinars. Offered in conjunction with GoToMeeting, which is ideal for small group meetings, GoToWebinar is a managed online event service designed to facilitate communication between a presenter and a large remote audience.

A key player in the web conferencing hosted services market, Citrix has seen tremendous success for its GoToMeeting web conferencing service which is primarily targeted at SMBs. GoToMeeting offers a user friendly interface and feature set. Looking to expand on its GoToMeeting user base, Citrix now offers GoToWebinar with additional features to support large Web events or Webinars. GoToWebinar comes with GoToMeeting for smaller and more collaborative online meetings, which can be used to follow up with Webinar attendees, and collaborate with co-workers, partners, and customers. We believe this new powerhouse combination of Citrix GoToMeeting with Citrix GoToWebinar is offering one total solution for organizations that want to enhance the reach and impact of their sales, marketing, and training efforts in order to create more efficient and real-time working environments.

Designed on the "simpler is better" philosophy and a flat fee, All You Can Meet™ licensing model Citrix GoToWebinar online service offers customers the ability to hold unlimited Webinars each month with up to 1,000 attendees per event. GoToWebinar offers easy set up through entry of a few details on a single scheduling form. It automatically generates the registration landing page and a Webinar invitation. Moreover, GoToWebinar’s real-time audience monitoring and reporting capabilities give presenters instant feedback on their marketing messages and help enterprises target the best leads first.

In addition to GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar, Citrix Online offers GoToMyPC, a solution for remote PC access over the Web and GoToAssist, a remote-support solution. Citrix Online products have a large installed base of more than 20,000 customers. GoToWebinar is successfully leveraging the strong Citrix brand as well as its corporate channels for cross-selling opportunities from other Citrix Online products. Besides addressing the traditional Citrix verticals, Citrix Online is leveraging its own established customer base in the technology and IT services verticals as well as consumer and SMB bases.

GoToWebinar represents an emerging class of Webinar products that will expand adoption of Webinars by SMBs, which have traditionally found holding web events out of their reach due to the high costs and complexity associated with creating and delivering Webinars. With GoToWebinar, Citrix Online is addressing the most demanding end user needs: simplicity and pricing. For its ease of use and cost effective solution and its potential impact on the web conferencing market, Frost & Sullivan presents Citrix Online’s GoToWebinar the Best New Web Conferencing Service Award.

Summary of Best Practices

Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, is a leading provider of easy-to-use, on-demand applications for remote desktop access, Web conferencing and collaboration. Its “Simpler Is Better” approach to empowering business productivity online offers small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and professionals an easier, more cost-effective and secure way to access and interact with information, customers, partners and employees in real time. GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar are helping organizations increase productivity, decrease costs and expand their reach to generate new revenue opportunities.

About Best Practices

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company’s industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit www.frost.com.
— Roopam Jain

According ZDNet contributor Phil Wainewright, Citrix Online is an “on demand giant that is getting it right” with its affordable, “All You Can Reach™” flat-rate licensing, ease of use, and secure, available, fast and easy (S.A.F.E.) platform.
— Phil Wainewright

IDC Mobile Program: “Citrix Online holds the majority of the market share in the remote access services market due to the success of GoToMyPC, and continues to innovate with additional uses for GoToMyPC technology such as business continuity,” stated IDC research analyst Stacy Sudan.
— Stacy Sudan

“When technical support issues strike, business as usual stops dead in its tracks,” said Bill Rose, founder and executive director of the SSPA organization, the largest and most influential industry trade group for technology service and support professionals. “Accessing the right expertise and quickly resolving the problem can be the stuff of costly nightmares\u2014for the customer and the IT/Support service provider. With the release of Citrix GoToAssist, a new model for virtual on-site support is taking place on the desktop, across industry and around the world today.”
— Bill Rose

“Vendors that can provide a high level of technical support, especially in a time-constrained industry like healthcare, will become more attractive. In an environment where the availability of IT expertise is already stretched, hosted services that help resolve user and technical problems faster increase the usefulness and availability of critical systems and allow clinicians to focus on providing patient care,” said Barry Runyon, healthcare analyst at Gartner Inc.
— Barry Runyon

Citrix Offers Enhanced Version of GoToMyPC

Citrix has announced the release of Citrix GoToMyPC 5, a faster version of its Web service that enables workers to securely access their desktops, including email, files, applications, and all network resources from any Web browser while on the road, at a remote site, or when working from home. The secure Web service is supported by five international datacenters supported by seven Internet service providers to ensure optimal performance.

New in GoToMyPC 5 are the following:

• Up to 4x faster performance: Connect quickly to a remote PC for fast remote desktop access.
• Drag and drop: Transfer files and folders quickly from one PC to another by dragging and dropping between screens. Access email attachments instantly and securely across platforms — an exclusive technology breakthrough.
• Performance tuning: Adjust the speed and screen display settings (which includes color) to the performance that bests suits user needs.
• Multimonitor support: Use GoToMyPC with multiple monitors connected to a single PC to enhance productivity.
• Performance monitoring: Self-diagnose connection speeds, review performance levels, and learn how to enhance performance to gain even greater levels of productivity.

Pricing starts at $19.95 per month per PC and includes unlimited remote access to PCs, the flexibility to change host PCs, free software and service upgrades, and free technical support and maintenance.

GoToMyPC is well positioned to deliver low-cost, secure remote access to small and medium-sized businesses that often have limited IT resources.
— Merle Sandler, Chris Hazelton, Raymond Boggs

Pointing to the accelerating opportunity available online for small and medium-sized businesses to grow and compete — with any size rival — as never before possible, best-selling author Geoffrey Moore used GoToWebinar as a prime example of how U.S. business must innovate or deal with Darwin. “The Internet is a game changer,” said Moore. “For entrepreneurs and small businesses, next-generation capabilities to conduct business over the Web offer low- cost access to communication and distribution channels that are still up for grabs. Citrix Online has shown enormous leadership with GoToWebinar in empowering small and medium-sized businesses to reach their potential on a global scale.”
— Geoffrey Moore Best selling author & Managing Director

“Secure, tightly integrated remote support offers better return on investment than managing disparate applications,” said Esteban Kolsky, research director at Gartner. “Certified integrations can pack a powerful punch for achieving rapid deployment and results that can increase customer satisfaction and retention while significantly reducing operational costs.”
— Esteban Kolsky

Citrix Upgrades GoToAssist and Releases New NetScaler for SMBs

“Citrix announced GoToAssist 7.0, the latest version of a remote technical support and services solution that enables small businesses to provide IT support. GoToAssist gives SMBs the ability to view, diagnose, and solve problems online by running diagnostics on the desktops of staff or customers in real time. The service incorporates 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) data encryption as standard protection for all sessions and enables compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the Gramm- Leach-Bliley Act. With features such as a management dashboard, expanded integration services, and enhanced collaboration and productivity tools, GoToAssist 7 gives SMBs the ability to provide remote services and support.

Leveraging the Internet to provide support for customers and critical business applications used by their employees gives SMBs the ability to compete with larger organizations with more resources (especially those that provide remote technical support to their customers). The goal of all smaller businesses is to be perceived as a larger organization, while still offering a more personal and responsive relationship with internal and external constituents.”
— Frost & Sullivan

“The 2005 Best New Web Conferencing Service Award was given to GoToMeeting based on its demonstrated excellence in developing and introducing a new class of service. Criteria used to determine the Award winner included: significance and competitive advantage of the new service; innovation in technology and pricing; pace of adoption; and number of competitors.”
— Frost & Sullivan

“GoToMyPC has made a serious run at this business and has the unique advantage of three datacenters. Citrix Online also has an industry focus with some compelling customer acquisitions across government, healthcare, financial, and education verticals. Citrix Online is truly taking a hold in the corporate business segment, where there is less churn and the opportunity to command a higher price. Its technology in terms of features and critical components such as security is also further along than other vendors’, giving the company a strategic advantage with the corporate customer. If Citrix Online can bridge the gap and begin to tap into the broader Citrix MetaFrame customer base, it has a real opportunity to push GoToMyPC and perhaps this market into much broader acceptance.”
— Stephen Drake, IDC

“Citrix GoToMeeting as a basic solution that is priced attractively and will appeal to businesses that require only a core suite of web conferencing features. The other solutions are described as more "feature" rich though costly and more difficult to learn and use.”
— Sara Radicati, The Radicati Group, Inc.

“GoToMeeting was pretty quick to come up and seemed to have a good variety of functions, including annotation. GoToMeeting is also secure enough to get the nod from HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and did not seem to interfere with Skype.”
— David Coleman, Collaborative Strategies