Server platforms Toolkit

Citrix CEO: We're at the front of the grid

Munir Kotadia ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 28 Oct 2003 17:10 GMT

Speaking at the Citrix iForum conference in Florida recently, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton told ZDNet UK that, having specialised in tools to allow applications to be streamed from the server to multiple clients since 1989, his company is ideally positioned to ride the current wave of hype from vendors such as Sun, HP and IBM around utility and grid computing.

Is Citrix simply another IT vendor jumping on the utility or grid computing bandwagon or do you really have something concrete to offer customers in this area?
I think that we have the chassis and underpinning framework for that bandwagon. We have been doing this for years and I can prove it to you. Do you remember ASPs (application service providers)? Do you remember who led the charge on that? It was Citrix. We founded the industry consortium and the only ASP activities that have been able to survive and prove that it works are some of those that adopted our technology as a core to providing it.

ASPs didn't build application software, they didn't build desktop operating systems or desktop software. Their whole value was providing access between the two and managing all of it. We have been working this for years, it has just taken the rest of the world a long time to catch up. Now it is sort of new all over again and there is a better opportunity to make it work this time.

You claim to have a lot of experience of this market but how do you deal with competition from Microsoft with its Terminal Server product?
We don't see Microsoft as a competitor and I don't think Microsoft sees Citrix as a competitor, but engineers -- who are all about innovation -- do compete with each other, and that is OK. Microsoft has a very horizontal and Windows-centric view of the world. That is their whole mission and we applaud that, but our view is different. Our view is heterogeneous -- it is all about access and the functionality needed for access.

Are there some overlaps into Microsoft's world, of course, it is impossible not to have overlaps. Microsoft's strategy is to own the real estate or property and then allow companies like Citrix to come along and build buildings that generate rent. Some of the rent goes to the property owner and the rest goes to the landlord -- that's how they grow. Microsoft depends on companies like Citrix to improve property for them and they benefit from it. Every dollar we spend on research, design, sales and marketing goes directly to benefit them. You can't do anything with a Citrix piece of software without Microsoft, so it is pretty simple. We are not the only company to do that. In Microsoft's new world, the world of .Net -- where applications are designed in components to use the network instead of the computer bus to communicate with each other -- they need partners as much as ever.