I still know a few good people at CSG, willing to ride it out as far as they can but, for how much longer? The market is flooded with talent with 1,000's more added everyday from Federal employees, senior tech directors, senior former Faang employees.
I am personally concerned for those left at CSG, i really hope they get a well deserved payout for remaining faithful. Something tells me - TK (Treasury Guy) is going to sc--w the leftovers. Where is CSG headed?
From @fp+1jmfb01jp:
"The open source world and the cloud world has started rapidly innovating in this space or are developing software which are no longer dependent on the safety provided by the CVAD and DaaS solutions"
Even when I left 3 years ago, it was this, as well as the more advanced browser isolation and SSE/SASE organizations that were eating Citrix's lunch (almost every enterprise customer I had was slowly deprecating their DaaS footprint and replacing it with AVD/Nerdio or something else that was less expensive and complex to maintain. Also, because the business had (just prior to, and of course after CSG) failed to continue to nurture and grow the user community and technical professional base as it had so well before 2018, there's a tiny number of people building careers around Citrix anymore - the EUC veterans are still around, but this little club is a lot of folks just milking the customers and technology for all they can until they retire (or retool their careers around cybersecurity, cloud, AI, etc.).
Cloudy
Krause is not interested in the long term (investing and innovating), only the short term, i.e. the quick buck. This mindset is not only bad for CSG but the valley as well, the new ecosystems will be lost to other such as Liang Wenfeng, Deepseek and China. Krause will will never see what he missed out on including a really big payday.
Ok Since you asked nicely, lets look at some scenarios. Why and where is CSG relevant?
The biggest cash cow is Citrix, the second biggest is Tibco. The other pieces are not so relevant monetarily (personally Xen technologies are still a great thing but not monetarily). Ok, Lets see where they stand? Citrix's main business is CVAD and its (inbred) cousin DaaS (NetScaler the cousin who works at the ranch but doesn't really have relevance out side the business that Citrix gives it via Storefront and Workspace). Their remaining customers are all too big to fail enterprises (smaller ones are chased away or in the process) who need a way to optimize and secure the utilization of their work environments where their employees can deliver productive work. Is this requirement getting met at the moment? Yes! But will it always be yes? is the real question. The reason being, due to the continual layoffs and the constant re-badging, the staff who can deliver has been reduced to the bare bones. Barely enough to meet the target of bugs and releases as per newer OSes, security patches and other such details. The AI push which the GMs and their Underlings imagined would be the silver bullet, has failed to materialize.
The open source world and the cloud world has started rapidly innovating in this space or are developing software which are no longer dependent on the safety provided by the CVAD and DaaS solutions - Realization of this was the point of my resignation as I was just enduring the constant toxic environment of working here with just hard working teammates who want a severance and scheming management employees who want to deny them that thinking that tighter teams will lead to a better win for them in terms of the P-e-RSUs and the ability to showcase the use of AI as a win in maintaining productivity despite people leaving. One of these d-mb MFers, claims that the company is now like a start up which will invite wild valuations from PE or from re-listing. The d-mbdonkey doesn't that the LBO has made the company a debtor and any improvement in valuation will go mostly towards re-payment of the Debt and not to him. Or he does know that and keeps cashing out the massive stocks he receives being a manager while doling out next to nothing to his reportees and tells them to hold while he cashes out each time making him an even worse human being.
But, I digress, lets come back to the future prospects.
So, no new innovation not even the minimal kind and no hiring in the pace that was previously happening (TK said he doesn't want to be a pay master or that Citrix already is one or something to that effect) to stop the leak. So, when the big shot customers have a renewal coming up and it coincides with a tech stack renewal, mark my words, they will move out of both Citrix and Vmware( the General Managers and CPOs - both sycophantic id--ts - are pinning their hopes on that Vmware customers will come to us like flies attracted to human fa---s) . On the contrary, I think a few will actually move from Citrix to Omnissa and other Vmware products as things have settled down there much sooner than Citrix.
Lets look at the other BUs, Netscaler (the cousin who wants to look attractive as the bigger ones but the only action she is getting is from her own cousins) is almost DoA. The more customers move out of Citrix, the sooner that lamp is gonna run out of oil. Same goes for Tibco, whose offerings are so poor and out dated that they can't be revived even with a Lazarus Level miracle. Unfortunately for them, they have been in the same boat Citrix has been, since much longer and will arrive at the same fate much sooner than Citrix.
So, to conclude, don't the higher ups know these things? Well, off course they do.. they knew the playbook before the deal went thru even. This is how 99% PEs work. My guess is TK will get the 3rd installment of his stocks in March and resign in "National Interest" as duty to his country and its efficiency is greater than that of a single organization. The reality being the fact that he actually no longer has any levers left to artificially boost the stock price. So the day he leaves, the stocks cash out at the current valuation - he has actually put in such a clause in the current CSG stock plan perhaps for this contingency. As soon as this happens, the board will put in a puppet CEO from within the ranks rewarding the "growth" in the last couple of years and then without the knowledge of any of the middle management, plan a sale in the next year or 2 (tops to maintain valuation instead of getting pennies to the dollar). So make hay when this sun is shining and leave after this year's stock vesting waiting for next year's cycle will not just prolong the pain, it might lead to another loss of money like when the stocks vested at $140 and sold at $104 automatically.
TL;DR:
Citrix, mainly focused on CVAD and DaaS, is losing its edge due to layoffs, lack of innovation, and an overreliance on AI that hasn't panned out. The open-source and cloud sectors are innovating faster, and big customers may soon leave for competitors like Omnissa. Netscaler and Tibco are struggling, and Citrix's management is pinning unrealistic hopes on VMware customers switching. Higher-ups likely know Citrix’s decline is inevitable, with plans for stock-based exits, potential CEO change, and a sale within 1-2 years. If you’re vested, consider leaving after the next stock vesting to avoid further losses.
It will be milked dry and then sold to a final chop shop PE that’s even worse to finally pull the plug after harvesting the organs.
It'll be continually stripped of resources til it's sold off. It's been happening every 6 months for the past 10 years at least. Unless you are waiting for a retirement payout.. get out
CSG will be milked for all its worth then bled for more. Don’t worry,no matter what happens TK will be fine.