Category Archives: Citrix History

When Citrix was Citrus

Posted on February 17, 2009 | 2 Comments

Citrix was not always called Citrix.  Originally it was called Citrus Systems.  This tale has been passed down for a number of years.  When I first started at Citrix in 1993, I remember seeing letterhead with the Citrus name.  Obviously it was left over for scrap paper.

Since then I have not seen any other evidence of this old name.  

Recently Ed Iacobucci posted pictures from the original office.  As part of this, it documents the original Citrus name.  Ed has agreed for me to use the pictures here as well.

citrussigncitrussystems

edsdesktexasoffice

edandrandyrandywood

officialsigningglenhamblin

The three people pictured are Randy Wood, Ed Iacobucci, and Glen Hamblin.

The office was in Richardson, Texas and was used by Citrus in 1989.

The photos of Ed and Randy are of signing the Series A funding documents.

The empty office is Ed’s original office.

Glen Hamblin is in the big office with lots of buffer space.

The carpet is actually a citrus color.

Thank you Ed for permission to use these photos.

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Digital Independence

Posted on June 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

Citrix has had many different promotional phrases over the years. Around 2000, the most popular catch phrase was “Digital Independence”.

The phrase was first introduced by Ed Iacobucci at iForum 1999. By itself, the concept does not mean much. However, based on the description from Ed it was destined to become a very important initiative from Citrix.

In a rousing keynote address this morning, Citrix Systems Inc. founder and chairman Ed Iacabucci set the tone for the two-day conference with the catch-phrase: The Age of Digital Independence.Digital Independence is a simple concept: Users get the applications they need from any client, from any server, over any connection, when they need them. This means they get access to their applications and data over LAN, WAN, dial-up, or wireless media when and where required.

It’s a simple idea, but one that has proved elusive until now. However, Iacabucci notes some impressive statistics that seem to say Digital Independence is near.

There were a number of changes made to try to make Digital Independence real.  Of these, perhaps the most successful was NFuse (Project Charlotte).  NFuse would later be called Web Interface.  With NFuse, it was possible to provide applications through a web page.

Following Iacabucci’s “vision thing” address, Mark Templeton, president and CEO, demonstrated two new technologies the company is working on to deliver applications even more transparently. Project Charlotte has resulted in technology, now in beta, that Web-enables Citrix MetaFrame capabilities. For example, with the technology, Citrix’s now-familiar Program Neighborhood can appear inside a browser. In effect, it becomes an application portal on intranets, or accessed through the Internet. One of the applications Templeton demonstrated was Citrix Videoframe, which plays video in the browser on the Citrix environment. This will be announced later this year.

Obviously VideoFrame failed to address the market.  Another area that didn’t do well was the ASP market.  In fact, many of the ventures from Digital Independence did not hit the mark.  Having a Unix version of MetaFrame never gained much attention.  The Vertigo project never matured to the point of acceptance.  It was supposed to provide a simple framework for writing web applications which were “richer”.  This really didn’t make much sense then or now.

Strangely enough we are about to encounter the second phase of what was called the ASP market.  Now that major players like Amazon and Google are providing services on the web, it would be possible to re-examine providing applications this way.

If you would really like to get into the details of what Digital Independence was all about, please read the Aberdeen Group Strategy Profile for Citrix’s Digital Independence.

My overall conclusion is that this initiative just started too early.  Several different markets simply were not mature enough to bring all of this to reality.  Also of note is that Citrix was just too young at the time to understand the scope of what it was trying to accomplish.

It was good that Citrix was willing to take risks to get this to happen.  Even though the full vision did not take effect, certain pieces were pivotal to Citrix success in the future.

It’s interesting to observe that the strategies that failed could be classified more like being a fox than a hedgehog (from Good to Great).  Things like Vertigo had little chance of success.  It had very little to do with our core business.

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Citrix VideoFrame 1.0

Posted on June 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

In 1999, Citrix released a product called VideoFrame. This new product was designed to make up for the audio and video shortcomings of server-based computing. In essence, it was an early audio/video streaming server. As good as it sounded, the product failed. By the end of 2000, the product was written off. The company that started VideoFrame was VDOnet which was acquired in July 1998.  The filing with the SEC explains what happened:

Acquired technology associated with the APM and VDOnet acquisitions were written down in the fourth quarter of 2000, as further discussed below under. “– Write-Down of Technology.”

VDONET

The in-process research and development acquired in the VDOnet acquisition consisted primarily of one significant research and development project, ICA Video Services. This project allows video applications and applications containing video to be viewed on an ICA client, and was targeted for the server-based computing market. At the date of the acquisition, VDOnet was shipping a client server video streaming product that was not operational in a Windows NT or in a MetaFrame environment. VDOnet was in the process of modifying its software to be operational in a Windows NT environment. In addition, VDOnet was developing enhancements that would provide for a live camera feed and multicast, which was intended to direct a video stream to multiple client devices simultaneously. The Company estimates this project was less than 65% complete at the date of acquisition. The aggregate value assigned to the in-process research and development was $2.4 million.

Following the acquisition, the Company continued the process of modifying the VDOnet software to be operational in a Windows NT environment. Subsequent development efforts resulted in the VideoFrame 1.0 product, which was shipped in the third quarter of 1999, but has resulted in few sales to end users. Since the acquisition, the Company explored alternative uses for the acquired technology. These uses related primarily to delivering video applications in a server-based computing environment and video streaming with ICA devices. Currently, the Company has no plans to further develop this technology.

Further down, it becomes very clear:

In July 1998, the Company completed its acquisition of VDOnet Corporation Ltd. The acquired core technology consisted primarily of the ICA Video Services project which allowed video applications and applications containing videos to be viewed on an ICA client. Subsequent development efforts resulted in the VideoFrame 1.0 product, which was shipped in the third quarter of 1999, but has resulted in few sales to end users. Since the acquisition, the Company has explored alternative uses for the acquired technology. By the third quarter of 2000, the Company was exploring uses related primarily to delivering video applications in a server-based computing environment and video streaming with ICA devices. In the fourth quarter of 2000, the Company reviewed potential modifications to its cash flow projections based on alternative uses for the technology. As a result of its evaluation, the Company did not believe that there were sufficient projected cash flows to support the carrying value of the core technology. As a result, the Company recorded a write-down of $1.8 million, representing the net book value of the VDOnet core technology as of December 31, 2000.

The fate of VideoFrame was sealed. It would take another 2 years to die completely.

The idea to support audio and video much better was sound. Based on the evidence, it appears that this product was just not mature enough to actually do it well. Audio support already existed with MetaFrame but it would not be until RAVE (SpeedScreen Multimedia) appeared that video would be possible.

It has always been difficult to get decent audio and video support in all scenarios. The basic problem is that streaming solutions expand the payloads before the client has a chance of getting the audio/video data. RAVE solved the problem for Windows Media Player by sending the data to the client without expanding. Unfortunately this did not include all video players. Work now being done with Apollo hopes to address more players.

Much of this works just natural evolution. Things are gained from past experience, especially if previous products fail. The hope is that eventually certain issues will become extinct.

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Barry Dockswell (was at Citrix, now City Commissioner)

Posted on May 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

Barry Dockswell

Barry Dockswell is one of the original Citrix employees who was hired in 1990.  During his eight years at Citrix, he made a major impact in the business development and culture of the company.  Just recently I have learned that Barry ran for office in Broward County in Florida (Ft Lauderdale area) and won.

Barry has his own web site at http://www.barrydockswell.com/ . This is quite a novelty.  I cannot think of any other old time Citrix employee which has such a public image and responsibility.

I remember years ago that Barry said he was going to write a book about Citrix.  I’m still waiting for that.  He could probably write a whole book just about what happened in 1997 with the tense Microsoft negotiations.

Congratulations Barry!

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User Experience by Brad Pedersen

Posted on March 18, 2008 | 2 Comments

Last year at the Citrix Solutions Conference in Europe, Brad Pedersen gave a presentation about “The User Experience“. If look at the slides, you will notice that the first several slides cover early Citrix product history. From experience, this kind of background is fairly rare and obviously important to people like Brad since he is the longest term Citrix employee. Brad started in 1989 as one of the founding engineers.

Brad and I share a desire to keep the history alive and to remember where Citrix came from.

I last saw him in Sydney during a Technical Interchange in 2005. We went on a boat cruise around the harbor with the rest of the team. Brad was busy taking pictures of Sydney as the sun was going down. I saw a copy of the pictures later and was very impressed. It was a very fun to see him again.

Brad has a certain insight that you just have to respect. It is good to see that he has stayed with Citrix this whole time.

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Russ Naples Video About 64-bit Computing (2005)

Posted on February 27, 2008 | Leave a comment
Russ Naples

There are a few Citrix videos available on the Internet.  I have not found that many yet but persistence usually pays off.  Just yesterday I found one via Veoh that featured Russ Naples.  I worked with Russ in the old days at Citrix and I would guess that he started not long after me.  He was the original (successful) test manager for Citrix.  Citrix had had some test managers before this but things did not always go that well.  He arrived late 1993.Russ had lots of stories about having worked at General Electric.  He was a no-nonsense kind of guy and was well suited to the work ethic of the younger version of Citrix.  He moved up the ranks over the years to eventually become in charge of the development group of Ft Lauderdale.  I only heard small stories about him after I left America in 1997.

Russ moved on to another company called AcXess.  I didn’t get to talk with him when he left so I do not know exactly what happened.  He left Citrix late 2006.  He left AcXess in 2007.  He is now at Learn.com.

Russ’ video was made to emphasize that Citrix was taking 64-bit computing seriously.   You’ll need Windows Media Player to watch it.

It appears to be produced for WinHEC 2005 and was intended to bridge between Citrix and Microsoft efforts for 64-bit support for AMD and Intel CPUs.  The changes to Citrix software all came true as a product for a special version of Presentation Server 4.0.  By the time 4.5 came around it was already built in.

Russ is a very colorful personality and you can sense some of this from the video.   He believed in pushing the envelope and had a very north eastern (New York) style of looking at the world.  I enjoyed working with him up until I left America.  After that our working relationship was essentially non-existent.  The last time I saw him was at a Technical Interchange in Ft Lauderdale in 2005.  I chatted with him briefly but it was obvious that we lived in two very different worlds.

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My First Citrix Patent

Posted on February 25, 2008 | 3 Comments

Back when I worked at IBM, there was a push to have more patents. They gave classes about what was valuable and how to best present new ideas for the sake of a patent. Until recently, I kept this material. I saw value in the information and always thought that somehow it would help the future inventor in me. Anyways, my friend Monte Copeland and I put together a invention disclosure titled something like “Making OS/2 Multiuser with Named Pipes”. Monte and I had put together a working system that we used in development. The ideas was to have a common server that would host sessions connected over network named pipes to clients. It was great for doing text based transactions. It was also great for sharing a powerful machine within a department. Compiles were much faster and people usually didn’t compile at the same time. This was combined with a sparse tree system with multiple layers to create the illusion of a full source tree even though a few files might be checked out. It was pretty hot for 1990-1991. Too bad we didn’t know how good we had it at the time. We were completely unaware of what Citrix was doing at the time.

We submitted our paperwork. Monte was convinced that nothing good would come out of it. I wasn’t so sure.

Monte was right. IBM published it as an announcement in one of their publications. It was not deemed strong enough for an invention disclosure. I was a bit disappointed and we both learned that IBM was not really that serious about taking in new ideas. Perhaps at the time they were skeptical of the value of software patents. At that point, they were still very much a hardware company. Today, as I see it, they are mostly a service company. From my simple point of view, they just skipped the software phase completely. This doesn’t mean that I think that they wrote bad software. It just means that I think that they never thought of themselves as a software company.

The only time I think they ever tried to change their minds is when they went after the OS/2 effort with full speed ahead. Unfortunately they were still acting as a hardware company. I think the bottom line was how many machines would be sold with OS/2 versus just selling OS/2 itself.

Excuse the digression. There is a point to the OS/2 reference.

When I left IBM in early 1993, I went to Citrix with many hopes. One of those hopes is that I would make a difference and that I would part of a good team. Both of those things came true. During mid 1995, there was a push towards taking the company public. One of the concerns was to create patents for our technology to stake our claims. It was exciting times since none of us had really considered getting patents for the work we had done. After a whirlwind exchange with the patent attorney, we had a handful of potential patents that we could file for. Each one of these would prove to be highly strategic for Citrix and continue to be relevant to this day.

The patent application I worked on with Andy Stergiades was titled “Method and Apparatus for Making a Hypermedium Interactive“. I remember being a bit skeptical about the potential for this given the experience with IBM. Luckily Citrix was a software company that was hungry for patents and actually wanted them. The application was accepted by Citrix and went forward to the Patent Office.

I’m really proud of this particular patent since it the collection of the work I did to bring Citrix to the Internet. The Internet client for WinFrame was a new model and almost instantly got the attention of companies like Microsoft. Instead of just focusing on launching programs from our client interface, it was possible to launch programs across the Internet. This is where the ICA file was born. This is where WFICA32.EXE came from. This is where the beginnings of NFuse and Web Interface came from. It is still fun to remember these early times.

I recently found some old notes I used to explain to the patent attorney. It isn’t hard to see the passion for trying to make a real difference for the company. And even though my hopes where high, the patent attorney took them even higher with the use of words to expand its possible application to technology.

The patent was granted in 2000 which was five years after it was filed. By then I was living in Australia. In fact, I had resigned in 1997 only to return in 1999. I had come back just in time to see the patent become accepted. There was a brief ceremony in Sydney and I was presented a plaque when now hangs in my office. Citrix was nice enough to create a plaque that captures the first page of the patent etched in metal. I guess it makes a good conversation piece if anyone was to stop by. There is so much stuff around the place that I don’t think anyone would even notice. Besides that, my family is used to my mess anyways.

The link above for the title points to a PDF copy of that first application. Perhaps some of you out there will find it interesting. The essential workings described are still in use today with WI. Of course, WI is much more advanced with how it handles the configuration and generation of the ICA files.

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More Citrix History (1989-2002)

Posted on February 19, 2008 | Leave a comment

Some things are hard to find. I’ve been working on this blog since September 2006 and this is the first time I have found an excellent report on Citrix history from an independent source. If you have about ten minutes, please read NetIndustries summary for Citrix. It’s interesting because I’ve never heard some of these things before and I’ve been involved with Citrix since 1993. I’ll give you some examples.

From IBM to His Own Company

Citrix Systems was founded by Edward Iacobucci, a software developer with a long-standing bent for business. His family hailed from Argentina, and he attended high school in Atlanta. Though he loved mathematics and science, Iacobucci was also fascinated by business early on, and as a teenager was president of a company set up through the Junior Achievement program. He was introduced to computing at Georgia Tech University in the 1970s, and went on to work for IBM. Iacobucci became acquainted with Microsoft’s entrepreneurial genius Bill Gates when the two worked together on a joint IBM/Microsoft project to develop the operating system known as OS/2. By 1989, Iacobucci had decided to leave IBM. He was offered a job at Microsoft as chief technical officer of its networking group. But Iacobucci instead gathered capital to go out on his own. He began with $3 million, raised on his vision of a more fluid world of computing, where different machines could run on any kind of software, and perhaps devices like televisions and telephones could be used to connect to powerful central software servers. Iacobucci first set up Citrix in Richardson, Texas, but quickly moved back to Coral Springs, Florida, where he had been living while working for IBM. The company began with five engineers, who also left IBM’s Florida offices. The young company’s chief executive was Roger Roberts, a veteran of Texas Instruments. Iacobucci was chairman. Citrix spent two years developing its first product, which was called Citrix Multiuser OS/2. Multiuser was to work with OS/2, which Iacobucci had spearheaded for IBM. It would let more than one worker at a time tap into the operating system, through a central server computer. The company went through a second round of financing, another $3 million, in 1990, and by 1991 was ready to bring out its first product. Just days before Citrix was prepared to ship Multiuser, Microsoft announced that it would drop OS/2 in favor of its new operating system, Windows. This was horrific news for Citrix. With OS/2 now an obsolete technology, Multiuser was virtually useless. Citrix had spent $6 million, and now had little hope of recouping much of this through Multiuser. At a September 1991 board meeting, the members argued about whether to call it quits and shut the company down. But Iacobucci and CEO Roberts were certain that the company’s engineers could start over, and make a Windows version of Multiuser, if only Citrix could get more financing.

The bold sections I found the most surprising. I did not know that Citrix almost called it quits in 1991. I also did not know that Ed had been offered a job at Microsoft.

Some early investors in Citrix were doubtful that the company could keep going. But eventually they agreed to put up more money, if other investors could be rounded up, to spread the risk some. The company came out of its crisis with another $5 million to keep it afloat until it could sell its new Multiuser. Intel was one big new investor, and another was Microsoft. Microsoft bought between 6 and 7 percent of the young company, and put one of its people on Citrix’s board. So though Microsoft’s ditching of OS/2 had almost capsized Citrix, the software giant then came to the rescue. Over the next four years, Microsoft put a total of $2.4 million into the company.

I had heard that Microsoft had bought shares in the company from that time and that they owned around 7 percent of the shares. This is the first public documentation I have seen about this arrangement. I was unaware of the $2.4 million altogether. I am not sure if this is for stock or in exchange for royalty payments on Windows.

The rest of the information has been covered from a few different sources. The early history is very deep and it seems like someone from Citrix or someone very close to Citrix must have wrote it. It ends at 2002 and there is no indication that it will ever be updated.

The final quote I will leave you with is about Ed’s original vision for Citrix technology.

The agreements with hardware manufacturers put Citrix closer to the goal Iacobucci had always had for it–to run sophisticated software from simple devices. Iacobucci envisioned the next wave of “thin” machine as an “information device” as opposed to a conventional computer. “… you take your keyboard, plug it into a phone jack and a monitor, and that’s it,” he speculated in a 1998 interview with Fortune. Iacobucci was imagining an essential transformation of the computing world.

This vision is still true. My post from yesterday demonstrates that.

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Citrix Offshoot From 1993

Posted on February 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

It is fairly well known that certain Citrix employees in the past have gone on to join or form other companies.  The most obvious recent example is Myxer which has a large number of early ex-Citrix people.  Things continue to go pretty well for them.  What isn’t so well known is that around 1993, several key people left Citrix to be part of new companies called Fairway and NewLeaf.  The people I remember going were Glen Hamblin, Greg Gruse, and Mike Hynes.  I think a few more might have left but it has been too long.  Back in 1993, having three people leave meant that Citrix was losing around 10 percent of its workforce.

There wasn’t any hard feelings from what I could tell.  At the time, Citrix was struggling and even a few people had gone back to IBM.  This was around the time that I started.  I had worked with Greg and Mike for several months before they moved onto this new venture.  When Mike left, I got his window cubicle.

The new companies were setup as a joint venture between IBM and Blockbuster Video.  The intent was to provide CDs and tape cassettes in Blockbuster stores (with the hope of expansion) that could be recorded on demand on a kiosk.  The pitch was that you could produce the stock on demand and not have to worry about inventory.  Customers could also request specific tracks and only pay for what they wanted.  The New York Times summarized it well in a 1993 article about the joint venture.  Luckily it is still available online.  Fairway/NewLeaf were created at an early time for the web and therefore there is very little coverage for it available.

One of the reasons I haven’t written about this topic before is because I didn’t have any decent material on it.  Perhaps my searching abilities have improved.  Maybe I just got lucky this time.

I also found an interesting 1993 Variety article about Fairway/NewLeaf.  Later in the writeup, it first becomes obvious that there might be some resistance to doing business this way.

“We’re not aware of it,” said Stan Gorman, a senior VP at Tower Records, the second largest buyer of prerecorded CDs. “There are six major distribution companies, with major workforces. I’m very skeptical. Sure, it sounds great, but we were supposed to have a man on Mars.”

Fairway/NewLeaf also suffered at the hands of the recording studios.  In Citrix, around that time, I would hear news back from the people that had left.  The hardest part was not the technology but rather getting the content from the studios.  The studios were worried that they would lose control and did not trust electronic distribution.  Remember, this was 1993.

The venture eventually dried up once IBM/Blockbuster realized that neither the stores nor the studios were going to buy into this model.  Sometimes the desire for change and a great idea is not enough.

It is very interesting to note that the current iTunes/iPod frenzy is very similar in concept to what they had tried to achieve.  Obviously Apple got it right and found ways to get everything to happen.  DRM and the Internet had matured enough that by around 2000, things were starting to pick up.  What is little understood is that sometimes an idea needs many generations of failure before it finally succeeds.

I’ll leave you with a true story of my own mistake in this field.  In 1984 I was a student at the University of Arizona.  My roommate and I would talk about ideas and whatever from time to time.  One time I told him that I thought it would be cool to have a device that could act as your own personal radio station.  I was thinking of some kind CD rack that would automatically switch tracks like a radio station.  I told him about how it would be great to give songs a rating and how it could pick the next song randomly based on the ratings.  The ratings could be dynamic so that you could give feedback to the system so that it would know whether to play the song more or less often.  I was very passionate about this idea at the time.

My roommate disagreed.  He thought that it was too much and that existing stuff would be fine.  We left it at that.

About a month later my roommate said, “Hey Jeff, I’ve been thinking about that idea you told me about and now I think it is a good idea.  I’d like to have something like that.”

My mistake was to assume that it would be based on CDs.  I also assumed that it would be fairly large.  Obviously I had no idea the Internet would play a major factor as well.

But perhaps my biggest mistake was not to try doing it.  It would have been a fun project to work on.

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