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'A grand strategy is a series of great tactical moves'

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DQI Bureau
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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.

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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.

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"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 . If the chip and the

operating system were free, then it wouldn't change anything that we're

talking about.

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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.

What about mission-critical apps?



Then you need to be connected! Whether

your IT team has virtualized the app or not- Because the database app is in

the data center-and if your client side is here, you have to be connected for

it to be meaningful. And for most IT organizations, in terms of data

replication, it's going the other way now: “I don't want to replicate

data, across databases, or across devices”. The world is a less and less

secure place, so I'm going to be more and more guarding of where my

information lives, how many copies, all of that. On the other side, there's

someone who should be always connected, but can drop off now and then. Wireless

networks can do that. We've done a lot to build resilience in. When you unplug

the network on a CRM app sitting on Presentation Server, it will sit there,

waiting to reconnect. When it comes back, it's usable again. So this is all

part of what the infrastructure needs to do to extend that.

How does the explosion of mobility

affect your direction?



I think it's a tremendous opportunity.

Whether it's local mobility, for instance, moving in an office campus from

building to building, or global mobility, when you leave the campus, go home, go

to the airport, or leave the city or country, whatever. All of those things are

fantastic for us. Because information is not as mobile as people are right now.

And so, 'impedance-matching' the mobility of information with the mobility

of people, that's a huge opportunity. And part of doing that is dealing with

the connectivity issues, the screen form factors, and so on, in real time, for

instance for a small mobile phone screen, or for color IP phones like at

Caesar's Palace hotel across the road, which can show advertising or other

applications. That's powered by our application gateway. So these are exciting

times. There are a lot of 'swirling gases' as in the galaxy, but its very

exciting at times.

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