INTERVIEW - Citrix Systems (NASDAQ:CTXS) on sales
By Michael Connor
FORT LAUDERDALE, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Fast-growing Citrix
Systems Inc. expects strong sales increases outside North
America to continue as the business software group partly owned
by Microsoft Corp. rolls out new types of software and fresh
versions of existing products, the chairman of Citrix said
Wednesday.
"Sixty percent of our sales could be international, but
when is the question," company chairman and founder Ed
Iacobucci said in an interview. "We have lots of places to go.
We're very little in southern Europe, the East bloc countries,
Latin America and Japan."
A specialist in software and services linking computers
for businesses, government agencies and other institutions,
Citrix last year got 40 percent of its 1998 revenues of $248.6
million outside North America.
Sales in 1998 were up 101 percent from 1997, largely on
the popularity of Citrix software allowing big computer users
to cut costs by extending the working lives of outdated
computers. Citrix has more than 100,000 server computers
worldwide using its two most popular products, WinFrame and
MetaFrame, President Mark Templeton said.
Typically, Citrix software replaces functions on a
personal computer by linking cheaper, much less powerful
individual machines to a central, or server, computer which
holds databases, Internet connections and other functions now
usually kept on each personal computer. Such centralization is
cheaper and more reliable, Citrix executives said.
Iacobucci, a celebrated industry figure who played a key
role in developing IBM's failed OS/2 software meant to compete
with Microsoft dominant operating system, said Citrix was
finding it easier to convince Europeans than Americans to adopt
Citrix's technology for business computing because
non-Americans in general had fewer emotional attachment to
personal computers.
"Outside the U.S., the computer is a tool," he said. "Here
it replaced the car and all day long we talk about Mips and
hard drives."
Citrix, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., doubled its
workforce to 610 people during 1998. Many of the new jobs were
outside North America and many of the new hires planned for
1999 will also be outside the United States, Templeton said.
The company is also aggressively licensing its Independent
Computing Architecture software to electronics manufacturers
such as Motorola for devices in development such as a wireless
phone able to tap directly into a company's computers. Citrix
on Wednesday announced ICA licensing deals with nine other
companies.
Iacobucci declined to discuss details of software to be
introduced in 1999, other than to say Citrix wanted to extend
its reach deeper into organizations than it does with its
MetaFrame and WinFrame products. The company's goal is to sell
software and services for all parts of an organization using
its server-based technology, he said.
When asked, Iacobucci described Citrix's ties to Microsoft
as quite good.
Microsoft owns about 7 percent of Citrix, whose main
products rely of Microsoft technology.
In 1997, news that Microsoft said it might develop its own
versions of Citrix software and refuse Citrix permission to use
Microsoft technology rocked the company's stock. But the two
reached a five-year, $175 million pact that is still in place.
"We add value to their platform," Iacobucci said. "I think
they view us as an important part of their structure in the
market."
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Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service |
