Mark
B Templeton is president and CEO of Citrix Systems, the '100% access
focused' enterprise software company that makes Presentation Server (earlier
Metaframe). He joined Citrix 10 years ago as VP marketing, after over a dozen
years in management positions at UB Networks, Keyfile and LANSystems. He's a
strong believer in globalization, and a driver of Citrix's global channel and
alliance network of over 7,000 partners. He also drove the company into the
Internet market. At Citrix's annual iForum event late last year at Las Vegas,
he spoke to Dataquest's Prasanto K Roy on globalization, outsourcing,
acquisitions, and evolution.
What does globalization mean to
you?
Too many companies call themselves
'global' just because they're doing some international business. They're
not really global. You talk to a real global company such as Boeing; they're
realizing and letting globalization work for them, as opposed to being a threat.
And obviously it's having radical changes around the world, as it is in India,
in good ways, I think. It's all breaking down barriers within business, so
that people can work in new ways.
You define your
business as access, and things around it. But that's covering a great deal of
ground. Will you span all possible areas around access?
The answer is yes...a big yes. But what
that means is: we want customers to see Citrix as the only company that has a
complete thought about access. But the delivery of it comes from a combination
of Citrix products, and third party products that fit together into this sort of
flexible infrastructure. So does it mean that we would supply everything? No, it
means that we would supply things that we are confident of, things that we
believe are “core”. And that third party would be supplying the rest.
Where do
acquisitions fit in? What do you do with them? What does Netscaler bring to the
Citrix table?
Acquisitions fit in where we need domain
expertise that we don't have, or where we don't have the time to get to the
market with our own internal development capabilities. Where they don't fit in
for us is as a growth strategy. Netscaler happened just last August, and
they've already changed our company. We are now clearer than ever about our
direction. It forced us to take a position, a message, around what's best for
client server, versus what's best for web apps. It forced that issue into a
clarity we've never had before. Now we have two ways for great types of web
application delivery...and the same thing goes for client server. The NetScaler
team has had a fair number of customers that have put NetScalers in front of
SAP, Oracle Financials...all of the client-server apps we've done so well in
virtualizing. But we believe as a company it's not what's best for a
traditional two or three or n-tier client server architecture. So it's really
driven that clarity in a way that we've never been able to achieve before.
But if you're
using to fill in a gap or to have a more complete offering for customers, how is
that at odds with growth? Isn't acquisition a growth tool for you?
Well, we really look for domains where we
don't have the knowledge. Second, we did have a number of options on how to
acquire the domain knowledge...and finally we felt that the velocity and timing
that we needed here was that we had to acquire a top player. And (B V Jagdeesh)
and (Prabhakar Sundarrajan), all of them, they're a top team. They're
teaching us a lot of things.
"The future appliance could be an access front-end...the big idea that sits in front of everything and handles what I call 'the first mile'." |
How do you see
the future in terms of OSS and software platforms--and especially Linux?
Well, I see it as an interesting world
(laughs). I see it as a highly polarized conversation right now, around open
source and Linux versus windows and proprietary. But you know, Microsoft won't
let that go on forever. They're really smart people, and they'll solve these
problems. What they won't solve is the political issues around all of this.
Let me say something radical. If countries, governments, want to actually build
software industries of their own, the best thing for them to support is not
Linux, but Macintosh. But either way, politically motivated business decisions
usually aren't lasting ones. Market economics can sort these things out
better. And I think Microsoft is going to be a profound player in the years
ahead. And that the Windows Longhorn server will take Microsoft way deeper into
enterprise data centers than anyone is imagining.
But aren't
those very economics influenced by choice? Without AMD, we'd have more
expensive Intel chips. Citrix is virtually a pure-play Microsoft shop.
Well, I don't really know the
answer...but I think it lies in doing some really thoughtful analysis: in the
end, if you're using something to get access to information, where are all the
costs behind it? Where are the slices, and whom do they go to? I think that
probably, Microsoft and Intel are concentrated. That's what makes them stand
out--but I don't think they have the biggest
operating system were free, then it wouldn't change anything that we're
talking about.
The cost of software doesn't
matter?
People talk to me about the price of
Citrix Presentation Server. So I say, hey look, we'll make it free. Now are
you going to do your project? They can't answer the question. The reason is
the cost of our software is about, on average, a tenth of the system cost. So
it's like if I give someone a 10% discount on a system, does that make them go
from affording it to not affording it? Usually not, if there's a real need. In
business, 10% makes no real difference to a core decision.
Doesn't the platform and OS
direction affect your business and plans?
Well, yes and no. If we maintain our
notion of providing an infrastructure that is resilient to change at device and
OS and application architecture and access scenario levels on each end of the
wire, then it won't matter. Because all of these issues...we're a solution
for those customers who want to be more resilient to it. So they're not hard
coded between application infrastructure and the access scenarios that need to
be supported. And so in some strange and ironic kind of way, the natural
grinding of the industry's tectonic plates between Linux and Windows and
Macintosh...Web services versus client server...whatever...all of that grinding
actually drives complexity and cost for customers. And we take that complexity
out. That makes a strong justification for our technology.
Where's the
world in server-based computing, after all these years? For instance, the
premise of 100 percent, always-on connectivity, which does not happen-either
due to failures or the nature of the non-always-on wireless world.
(Laughs) I think the simple answer is,
“What's best?” Take your own example. You're disconnected now, and
you'll be connected on and off. That's the reality of what you do. That has
nothing to do with the quality of the net connectivity. That's the nature of
what you do: sometimes you're on, sometimes you're off. And that's what
you need. And then there are people who may be on and off because there's a
bad network behind them. And they should really be always on! So what we're
trying to do is have the infrastructure that deals with all those cases. For
instance, with desktop application streaming, these sort of personal
productivity apps that you can have here, under the control of your IT. When you
connect, they're streamed to you, and then you can disconnect, and reconnect
later. And when you're connected, you'll get your updates automatically, you
won't even know. It services your need to be connected, then disconnected.