Citrix extends end-to-end application delivery strategy

Citrix Systems has announced a significant expansion of its end-to-end application delivery strategy, making it faster, simpler, and more cost-effective to deliver applications to users in branch offices and other remote locations.

As a cornerstone of this strategy, Citrix announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Orbital Data, a leading provider of solutions that optimise the delivery of applications over wide area networks (WANs). As an emerging leader in the fast-growing WAN optimisation market, Orbital Data gives Citrix best-in-class technology as well as a strategic presence at the entry point to branch offices worldwide.

The all-cash consideration payable to the shareholders of Orbital Data is approximately $50 million, and the acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2006. The company also assumed approximately 0.3 million unvested stock-based instruments each of which upon vesting will be exercisable for the right to receive one share of the company`s common stock.

An estimated 55% of enterprise employees today access all of their mission-critical business applications from a remote office or branch location, often hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the corporate data centre. As these applications are used by remote employees, application data must travel back-and-forth many times over long-distance WANs, a process which can significantly degrade performance and the user experience, and force expensive bandwidth upgrades in an attempt to solve these challenges. This growing problem has given rise in recent years to a new category of products that optimise the flow of all applications over the WAN, including client-server, web, file sharing, bulk data transfer and even new application types such as voice-over-IP and video. According to IDC Research, the market for WAN optimization products was $314 million last year and is expected to nearly double over the next three years, reaching $610 million by 2009.[1]

Founded in 2002, Orbital Data has over 75 enterprise customers and over 60 employees. Citrix selected the San Mateo, California-based company because it offers the best WAN optimisation technology in five areas critical to Citrix`s end-to-end application delivery strategy.

1) Best ease-of-use.
Unlike alternative products that can be difficult to deploy and manage, Orbital Data offers several unique capabilities that make it virtually "plug-and-play," a critical advantage for under-staffed IT departments in remote branch office locations. Its AutoOptimizer technology automatically applies the best combination of performance-boosting techniques for each data flow to match the application, the data and the network conditions without requiring configuration or management changes. Orbital Data is also the only solution on the market to feature true "network and application transparency," meaning that network monitoring tools, firewalls, routers and applications need no modification when the Orbital solution is deployed. Just plug it in, and it works. This advantage will help drive faster adoption throughout the existing Citrix installed base and will make the Orbital solution an ideal fit for the extensive Citrix channel.

2) Best solution for small branches and mobile users.
Orbital Data was the first company in the industry to deliver a compact, software-based version of its branch appliance technology that can be deployed directly on a remote user`s PC. In contrast, most alternative solutions are delivered only as appliances, limiting their value to employees who are physically located in a large branch office. Solutions that do offer software clients are limited to accelerating only a narrow class of applications. Orbital Data`s software client addresses both of these limitations, accelerating all TCP-based applications to all remote users, including employees in small "micro branches," home offices or on the road. This client capability also provides an ideal strategic fit with Citrix`s end-to-end strategy, extending application delivery from the data centre to the desktop.

3) Best acceleration over long distances.
The Orbital Data solution excels in some of the most problematic branch office application delivery scenarios, most notably file sharing and bulk data transfer applications that deliver large files over long distances. With the growing importance of business requirements such as disaster recovery, outsourcing, digital asset management and collaborative engineering, these advantages can be significant to many large enterprises.

4) Best acceleration of Citrix Presentation Server.
Orbital Data also offers the best solution to further accelerate applications delivered by other Citrix products, most notably, Citrix Presentation Server. In internal tests, Orbital Data has been shown to improve the performance of Presentation Server by as much as five times for end users, especially for remote printing and local file save tasks that necessitate the transfer of large volumes of data over the WAN. This capability gives Citrix an ideal opportunity to leverage its installed base of more than 160 000 Citrix Presentation Server customers and presence in enterprise WANs across the globe.

5) Highly extensible architecture.
Orbital Data also offers a highly-extensible architecture, making it easier for Citrix to add innovative new capabilities, including tighter integration with other elements of the Citrix end-to-end application delivery infrastructure.

Introducing Citrix WANScaler

Upon close of this acquisition, Citrix plans to reintroduce the Orbital Data product line under the Citrix WANScaler brand. The new Citrix WANScaler team will become part of the company`s Application Networking Group headquartered in San Jose, California, which is responsible for appliance-based solutions such as Citrix NetScaler, Citrix Access Gateway and Citrix Application Firewall.

Citrix WANScaler will be sold through two distinct go-to-market initiatives. Networking buyers, who drive many WAN optimisation decisions today, will be addressed through Citrix partners authorised in application networking, and a dedicated WANScaler sales specialist team, much like the company`s NetScaler solutions are sold today. In addition, Citrix plans to offer specialized, easy-to-deploy versions of the product, including a Citrix WANScaler for Presentation Server offering, which will have broad applicability to the larger Citrix installed base and worldwide field and channel organisation.

The Citrix WANScaler product line will offer three distinct advantages to Citrix customers as part of the company`s end-to-end application delivery strategy (for more information on Citrix WANScaler, see http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/news/Citrix_WANScaler.pps):

a) Citrix WANScaler will further accelerate client/server and web applications delivered by Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix NetScaler to branch offices, making them run up to five times faster.
b) Citrix WANScaler will accelerate applications that are most problematic for branch office workers by up to 50 times, most notably file sharing apps and bulk data transfer applications.
c) Citrix WANScaler will give branch users additional application delivery benefits, such as improved quality of service, for new application types like voice and video.

"Citrix continues to research, develop and acquire leading technologies that give the company a unique position in the market, solving the complete end-to-end application delivery challenge for companies of all sizes," said Nick Keene, country manager, Citrix SA. "With more than half of all employees worldwide accessing their applications through branch offices, and even more connecting from home or on the road, the Orbital Data solution and team will significantly enhance the Citrix value proposition for this important market. Just as importantly, they will improve our ability to be a trusted partner for customers looking for the best way to deliver any application to any user in any location."

"The enterprise-wide breadth of our application delivery technology will now be further enhanced through this combination of forces with Citrix," said Dick Pierce, CEO, Orbital Data. "The additional benefits of an even more powerful enterprise scale solution will soon become evident as we continue our voyage under a new flag.