Citrix Changes the Game in Cloud Infrastructure with Cloud.com Acquisition

Market Leading Cloud.com Platform Lets Customers Build Clouds the Way the World’s Most Successful Clouds Are Built

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--()--Citrix Systems today announced it has completed the acquisition of Cloud.com, a market leading provider of software infrastructure platforms for cloud providers. The company’s innovative CloudStack™ product line helps providers of all types deploy and manage simple, cost-effective cloud services that are scalable, secure, and open by design. This acquisition further establishes Citrix as a leader in infrastructure for the rapidly growing cloud provider market. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The transition from the PC Era to the Cloud Era is expected to fuel a massive build out in cloud infrastructure, creating a new market projected to exceed $11 billion by the end of 2013, according to industry analystsi. This market will feature thousands of providers of all shapes and sizes, offering a vast array of new cloud services ranging from business, infrastructure and development offerings, to consumer, mobile and gaming services. Most of the clouds that service this market will look nothing like traditional enterprise datacenters. They will run on radically different platforms purpose-built for cloud computing – platforms designed from the ground up to deliver multi-tier, multi-tenant services in the simplest and most cost-effective way. The world’s largest and most successful public clouds are all built this way today.

The Cloud.com product line is not a traditional enterprise server virtualization platform with cloud management layered on top. It is a powerful, hypervisor-agnostic solution designed from the ground up to help providers build clouds the way the world’s largest and most successful public clouds are built – simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient. This proven approach has helped Cloud.com customers around the world roll out new cloud services up to 50 times faster, at one fifth the cost of alternative solutionsii.

With the addition of Cloud.com, Citrix now offers a complete portfolio of virtualization, orchestration and networking solutions purpose built for the Cloud Era – solutions that are not only among the market leaders individually, but also designed to help customers avoid vendor lock-in by letting them use the hardware, software, management products and service providers of their choice.

Citrix Commitment to Openness

A commitment to openness and interoperability has been a central pillar for both Citrix and Cloud.com, and will accelerate further with this acquisition. The Cloud.com product line will continue to support leading commercial hypervisors such as Citrix XenServer® and VMware vSphere, as well as open source hypervisors like Xen®. Citrix intends to add support for Microsoft products like Hyper-V and System Center to the Cloud.com product line, as well as support a full range of “platform-as-a-service” development environments, storage systems, servers and management software.

A key part of this commitment to openness is a full embrace of open source as an essential element of cloud computing. In addition to providing leadership in communities like Xen.org at the virtualization layer, this acquisition will help Citrix further accelerate its support of OpenStack, the popular open source cloud infrastructure movement that now includes over 1,100 cloud developers, and more than 80 member companies. As a founding member of Openstack.org, Citrix is the second largest contributor to the project and is a member of the OpenStack policy board.

Citrix product support for OpenStack was initially announced at the recent Citrix Synergy conference under the code name “Project Olympus.” With this acquisition, Citrix will also be extending OpenStack support to the Cloud.com product line in an upcoming release later this year.

Citrix Cloud Infrastructure Portfolio

With the addition of Cloud.com, the Citrix infrastructure portfolio for cloud providers will include:

Cloud Platform Products:

  • CloudStack (new) – next generation, hypervisor-agnostic, cloud infrastructure platform.
  • XenServer – secure, cloud-optimized virtualization platform

Cloud Networking Products:

  • NetScaler® Cloud Gateway – sits at the “front door” of corporate datacenters giving IT an easy, unified way to orchestrate the delivery of any mix of SaaS, web and Windows apps to end users on any device.
  • NetScaler Cloud Bridge – sits at the “back door” of corporate datacenters, giving IT unlimited capacity by seamlessly and securely extending any datacenter to any external cloud service, regardless of hypervisor or platform.
  • NetScaler SDX, MPX and VPX – powerful networking platforms designed from the ground up to serve as a “service delivery fabric” for virtual datacenters and clouds.

App and Desktop Products:

  • XenApp™ and XenDesktop® – market leading virtualization solutions that let cloud providers deliver Windows apps and desktops as a service to any device.

Citrix Cloud Platforms Product Group

The addition of Cloud.com brings Citrix an incredibly talented team that includes some of the world’s most experienced cloud computing experts. Cloud.com CEO Sheng Liang will continue to lead the design, architecture and technology of the CloudStack product line, reporting to Sameer Dholakia, group vice president and general manager of the newly-formed Cloud Platforms product group at Citrix.

Product Availability

The Cloud.com CloudStack solution is available to cloud providers today, with Citrix branded versions coming in a future release.

Quotes

Mark Templeton, President and CEO, Citrix Systems, Inc.

“As the industry moves into the Cloud Era, Citrix is committed to leading the charge with powerful solutions that make the cloud more open, more secure, and more personal. We are delighted to welcome the Cloud.com team to the Citrix family to focus our combined efforts on helping customers of all sizes make a difference in business, and in the lives of their customers and employees.”

Sheng Liang, CEO and Founder, Cloud.com

“Cloud.com is the platform behind many of the world’s most innovative and successful clouds. Joining forces with Citrix will dramatically accelerate our mission to help customers achieve all the promise cloud computing has to offer, in a way that’s open, secure and efficient.”

Jim Curry, GM of Cloud Builders, Rackspace

"Citrix has been a leader in the creation of OpenStack, assembling an impressive team of developers and creating Project Olympus to take open cloud-scale technology into the market. With the addition of the Cloud.com team, Citrix is furthering their commitment to OpenStack, ensuring that the OpenStack platform and APIs are even more widely available to customers everywhere."

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About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is a leading provider of virtual computing solutions that help people work and play from anywhere on any device. More than 230,000 enterprises rely on Citrix to create better ways for people, IT and business to work through virtual meetings, desktops and datacenters. Citrix virtualization, networking and cloud solutions deliver over 100 million corporate desktops and touch 75 percent of Internet users each day. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies in 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2010 was $1.87 billion. Learn more at www.citrix.com.

For Citrix Investors

This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release, which are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, statements by the company concerning the acquisition of Cloud.com; integration plans; new capabilities of certain of its products; its plans to expand certain of its technologies and platforms to include enhanced capabilities; the company’s markets; and management’s plans, objectives, strategies and assessments of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, the reaction of customers of Citrix and Cloud.com to the acquisition; Citrix timing and ability to successfully integrate Cloud.com’s products, operations (including migration of Cloud.com to Citrix systems and controls) and employees; the introduction of new products by competitors or the entry of new competitors into the markets for Citrix and Cloud.com products; the failure by Citrix to retain key employees of Cloud.com; failure to further develop and successfully market Cloud.com’s technology and products, including failure to execute Citrix sales and marketing plans and failure to successfully partner with key distributors, resellers, OEM’s and strategic partners; failure to achieve or maintain anticipated revenues and operating performance contributions from Cloud.com; the impact of the global economy and uncertainty in the IT spending environment, including Citrix European markets; the success and growth of the company's product lines, including risks associated with successfully introducing new products into Citrix distribution channels; the company's product concentration and its ability to develop and commercialize new products and services while maintaining sales of its established products; disruptions due to changes in key personnel and succession risks; seasonal fluctuations in the company's business; the company's reliance on and the success of partners for the marketing and distribution of the company's products; the company's ability to maintain and expand its business in small sized and large enterprise accounts; the size, timing and recognition of revenue from significant orders; the success of investments in its product groups, foreign operations and vertical and geographic markets; the management of anticipated future growth; the recruitment and retention of qualified employees; risks in effectively controlling operating expenses, including failure to manage unexpected expenses; impairment of the value of the company's investments; the effect of new accounting pronouncements on revenue and expense recognition; litigation and disputes, including challenges to our intellectual property rights or allegations of infringement of the intellectual property rights of third parties; the inability to further innovate our technology due to the intellectual property rights of third parties; changes in the company's pricing and licensing models, promotional programs and product mix, all of which may impact Citrix revenue recognition or those of its competitors; charges in the event of the impairment of assets acquired through business combinations and licenses; competition, international market readiness and execution risks; unanticipated changes in tax rates or exposure to additional tax liabilities; risks of political and social turmoil and other risks detailed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and is subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.

Citrix®, NetScaler®, XenApp™, XenDesktop® and XenServer® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Xen® is a trademark of Citrix Systems, Inc. managed on behalf of Xen.org, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

i IDC’s Public IT Cloud Services Forecast: New Numbers, Same Disruptive Story, July 2010

ii Based on Cloud.com customer benchmark study, October 2010

Contacts

Citrix Systems, Inc.
Julie Geer, 1-408-790-8543
julie.geer@citrix.com
Twitter: @CitrixPR

Contacts

Citrix Systems, Inc.
Julie Geer, 1-408-790-8543
julie.geer@citrix.com
Twitter: @CitrixPR