It's sad - I am not sure why they waited so long, I thought I was safe, but I was wrong. I have had a short tenure here so no hard feelings.
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I also realize that Amazon does more than IaaS, but still, the (far richer) feature set we offer for would fit more in the SaaS category.
@FkQto9f-2Bhbw First of all, I agree, Citrix is known as an app virtualization company, but that does not mean that this is NetScaler's focus. One of the most significant goals of the re-org was to split up the company into neat little business units. I can assure you that if the delivery networks BU was lopped off of Citrix, it would function just fine for the most part.
If the company pivots away from app virtualization, of course, NetScaler would probably break away (eg acquisition). There'll be no space for folks from the other BUs. That's the nature of the industry.
Also, NS is most directly competing over F5, not Cisco. Even though there are overlaps with the product offerings of the latter, NetScaler offers quite a different set of solutions. I'd say NS is more complementary to Cisco than is in competition with them. As for, F5, well, we're still fighting the good fight against them.
You are putting a whole set of differentiated products into the "cloud services" category. We are not and probably will never be in the Infra-as-a-Service business. Again, our cloud offerings across the board are complementary to what Amazon etc offers. We may yet face some competition from Azure, but that's the nature of life. We need only out-innovate them, and is a major point of focus, especially for the DNBU.
But I see your point, Citrix in general got lazy, adopted poor strategies and is now paying the piper. App virtualization is not a hot commodity, and more so for desktop virtualization. Still, that does not mean that all company units are in trouble; NetScaler is doing very well and can survive on its own as a going concern.
It might be too late to compete against Amazon, and it isn't only Citrix which is left behind, Azure doesn't take over.. We will see
To clarify my "app virtualization" comment. I did not mean that NetScaler is an app virtualization product. I meant to say that Citrix image is one centered on app virtualization. Outside of those who use Citrix products, ask what Citrix does (you can guess what the answer is). Hell, ask Citrix employees what does the company do (or does best) and see what you get.
When push come to shove and the company pivots away from app virtualization, do you think you need the entire workforce to support NetScaler? If the focus is NetScaler, then Citrix is competing directly against Cisco or F5. If the focus is Virtualization (not just app virtualization), then it competes against either VMWare, and VMWare is already pivoting away from that (they fired the entire VMWare Worstation staff in the US) and into cloud services.
And if Citrix were to focus on Cloud services, then it will be competing against Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and quite possibly a new VMWare after the Dell-EMC acquisition.
Netscaler or not, Citrix is still perceived (inside and outside) as a virtualization company, an app virtualization company. When the readjustment come (and oh yes, it will), heads will roll.
This is why I said that I'm afraid Citrix got caught in a RIM/BlackBerry moment, caught by surprise by a massive paradigm shift.
NetScaler is not an app virtualization product.
It doesn't matter how advance or great Netscaler as a product is. App virtualization is a dead end. I fear Citrix got caught in a RIM/Blackberry moment, unable to pivot and ride the paradigm shifts that were (and are still) taking place.
@FkQto9f-2hgg NetScaler is a lot more than just the open source FreeBSD platform. I assure you that no two engineers in the world would be able to manage that platform in any productive capacity. As far as innovations go, it's also ahead of pretty much every org.
Too many locations. Time to consolidate resources in Ft Lauderdale
It is funny that Citrix needs a whole team for NetScaler. The core of it is based on open source anyway. An efficient engineering setup wouldn't have more than 2 developers on it.
The problem is that Citrix has way too many employees, relative to the size of its business. If you look at other companies in this space, and and compare the ratio of annual revenue against the number of employees, then it becomes clear that Citrix has over invested in many areas. I would also add that they suffer from the big company problem of having too many teams doing things that are not core to their business. Either they make corrections now, or time will force larger corrections within the next 12 months. The business itself is not in a growth spot, with BYOD and other vendors forcing their way into the enterprise computing space.
Who and what groups affected in Santa Clara?
The only group that matters in Santa Clara is NetScaler... If you aren't in that group, I'd jump fast!
Move on bro
I am sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, this seems to have become the norm here.
A better opportunity awaits you elsewhere.