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Technology Stocks : Citrix Systems (CTXS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mauser96 who wrote (7046)	10/24/1999 11:25:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9068

Lucius, I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that we're in agreement that Citrix's product is in the bowling alley, having crossed the chasm but not yet into the tornado. It's encouraging that so many big companies are trying out Citrix products, but if they were really happy with the product we should soon be seeing bigger sales volume. Has the dissatisfaction with the high overall costs of their usual fat client server networks reached the level that companies are willing to take the jump to a "radical" solution like CTXS? Are there niches inside the mass market that are hurting a lot more than the rest? I don't know the answers to these questions, but the next few quarters should tell the story. I hope I can persuade you to read Inside the Tornado if you haven't already done so. I share your concern about everything you mention and am especially concerned after reading the book that management might not be using the right approach. Moore says that all marketing in the bowling alley should be vertically based. I could be wrong, but it appears to me that Citrix is using horizontal marketing. The risk in doing that is that the product may never get to a tornado or that a competitor (probably a future one since no viable one exists yet in my mind) will get to the tornado and come out the gorilla. By the way, you've mentioned the cultural challenge of getting salespeople to effectively use Siebel products. It's interesting that the existence of cultural barriers is the subject of a major discussion in Tornado and might be the reason we haven't seen Citrix's tornado take off yet. Also, the book explains that in various phases of the product adoption life cyle marketing should be done at times toward the IT folks and at other times toward the end-user decision makers. I can't remember which is best in the bowling alley and the book isn't immediately at hand. I'll be interested in seeing if Citrix is playing the game according to the gospel of St. Geoff. Your thoughts? --Mike Buckley