"The 1999 agreement, you say it wasn't a good deal for CTXS."
Hectorite,
I didn't mean to give the impression that the $175 million payment was not good. It was good. The non-event is the Nov 99 expiration of the, "marketing," section of the agreement. MSFT was doing very little to help market WinFrame/MetaFrame for non-Window clients anyway.
And you are correct. WinFrame is only a very small percentage of CTXS revenues. I thought it was 1% or so. It's definitely phased out nicely.
The original May 1997 agreement ($175 million royalty and marketing) was most significant in the fact that CTXS was one of the few companies that MSFT didn't simply squash when their goals conflicted. Instead, the CTXS technology lead was so great, MSFT had to end up paying for it. As a related side note, most feel the justice department trial has been a strong positive for CTXS' future relationship with MSFT.
Up to the latest MSFT version of NT4.x, there was 100% CTXS add-on adoption (Even with Window clients). This is significant because it shows how valuable CTXS technology is to the customer.
With Terminal Services for Windows 2000, the jury will be out for awhile. Some say it's good, some say it's not good for CTXS. I don't have a strong opinion but it certainly appears CTXS management is not concerned but they never come out and say precisely why.
But now that I'm thinking about it once again, I guess even if CTXS management felt like Windows 2000 Terminal Services Edition via RDP (RDP is MSFT's version of CTXS' ICA) was no good, they don't want to come out and trash it because CTXS and MSFT are joined at the thin-client hip.
You see I told you it was both easy to understand, and difficult! But it's been fun figuring it all out with other CTXS investors. <G>
HTH,
MikeM(From Florida)
PS BTW the, "amended," portion of the agreement you quote from S&P was interesting too. CTXS went to MSFT after the original agreement was signed and said, "Hey just pay us quarterly and forget the based on sales stuff." MSFT said, "Okay." I wonder how often this happens? |
