Anothre old-timer here, seen many ups and downs... morale never so low. The feeling is that this time Citrix is truly dead, no future ahead. End of the road.
I think most of us can agree with this. When there is no Citrix in the future, five or however many years from now, this is what they will point to as the moment when the company's fate was sealed. There is no going back for Citrix from here.
You should all have been worried about it when Mark Templeton squandered billions of dollars in bad acquisitions and kept the Innovex mafia in charge of the company. Citrix has been run like a small business for years and the lack of leadership culminates in the technology being garbage that is outdated and must be squeezed for its final profits by a private equity company.
Mark was charismatic but he was a terrible CEO and the company did well not because of him, but despite of his poor management. The product was excellent and served a customer too well but the company rested on its laurels and didn’t invest in developing the right new features and functionalities… look at VMware, in 2010 Citrix was bigger and stronger… now VMware is 5 times the size of Citrix… why did that happen?
Citrix was run like a mom and pop store by Mark and the company has been able to survive despite people like Bob being the chairman of the board, hiring Kirill (who actually had some good ideas but when he clashed with the Innovex mafia they got rid of him) and finally David who steered the ship as well as he could. Citrix made a lot of these people wealthy beyond belief…
it’s sad to see it ended like this because lots of great people work at Citrix.
@2cjr+1jb3SsZJ Very comforting and encouraging post, all true, thank you.
Folks,
If you look back at the press releases from Citrix, what has been new and taken off in the market in the last 5 years? Anything memorable? Anything that our customers clamored for? Not really...
It is hard to believe and accept but Citrix has been past its prime for at least 5 years. As MSFT introduced WVD which morphed to AVD and the load balancer function on the clouds reached maturity, the signals were clear for both XD and ADC. Then, as Citrix saw itself on funny mirror as much larger than itself and thought it would be "the workspace, MSFT again put is in our place as they invested in Teams to make it the next center of work. I remember the meeting where MSFT shared their plans for teams and we looked like a deer in headlights...
The sooner you accept this reality, the sooner you will be able to make the right decisions for yourself. Whether you want to sail into the sunset in a company optimized for cash flow, or find a new place where innovation and growth are the top objectives, its been time to decide for at least since January 2022, and realistically, since 2020, albeit with not as clear signals. So decide and move on. Make the change. Yes, not easy, but, it is time.
And you are still not clear,
go to your old library or your children's bedroom library and find the book
from Dr. Seuss and read it: Oh the places You'll go!
You will find all of the motivation you need.
It’s time for me to move on. I’m all done with the stress and the grief. I’ve been carrying it way too long. I’m ready to get it done, and I expect to be a “former” Citrix employee by this time next week.
And for the record - the old logo was a lot cooler than that sterile POS that Henshall put out there. The upside down i — no other brand had such a distinct signature. Peace out Citrix, it was great while it lasted.
Breaking up legacy Citrix BUs into independent smaller pieces will make them easier to sell to another company. Each of those remains can now survive somewhere else, where they may have a little more time to provide value and then die peacefully and quietly.
Perhaps that's a fitting end to a company's assets that, for the most part, have already served a purpose. Yes, it's the end of the main road, but also the beginning of several small cul-de-sac entities that may last another year or so. It's the end of an era, for sure.