Citrix Systems acquires NetScaler

Johannesburg, South Africa - 14 June 2005 - Citrix Systems has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held NetScaler Inc, a US-based IT company.

The acquisition of NetScaler, the global leader in high performance application networking, supports the company`s strategy to consolidate technologies in the access infrastructure market and to drive the organisation into high-growth markets adjacent to the access infrastructure market for the purpose of increased customer value.

The transaction, valued at approximately $300 million in cash, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2005, subject to customary closing conditions including shareholder and regulatory approvals.

NetScaler pioneered the market for next-generation networking acceleration and initially rose to prominence in the Internet market, delivering technology to top companies such as Google, Amazon, Dow Jones and MSN.

Today, NetScaler has more than 500 enterprise customers and over 3 000 deployments of its award-winning products, including Fortune 500 leaders Merrill Lynch, JC Penney, 7-Eleven, Blue Cross, Ford and United Airlines.

Application networking is a fast-growing, emerging segment of the overall networking market and according to market research, is expected to grow to about $3 billion by 2007. Unlike traditional networking products that focus on the underlying connectivity between systems and networks, application networking solutions provide application layer intelligence called "application fluency". This ensures every user receives the best possible access experience based on their role, device, network and location as well as the specific application or service being accessed.

Gartner describes this distinction by way of a simple analogy: "Let`s say you are `aware` of Japanese. When you hear two people talking in Japanese, you may know what language they are speaking, but you will probably not be able to provide much meaningful value to the conversation. If you are `fluent` in Japanese, however, you will be able to fully participate in the dialogue, providing real, substantive value."

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By being fluent at the application level, application networking solutions can dramatically enhance performance, security manageability, reliability and availability of those applications over the network, thereby greatly improving the experience of users.

"This is an exciting acquisition for Citrix. With this acquisition, our existing customers will benefit from lower costs and increased performance of their Citrix Presentation Server systems. These benefits will also be available to our customers deploying Web-based applications and services," says Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Citrix.

NetScaler products accelerate the delivery of all applications by five times or more, regardless of protocol, client type or user location. This dramatically improves the overall access experience for end-users as well as overall data centre efficiency.

"NetScaler extends our best access experience value for the entire range of Web-based applications, including enterprise, browser-based, XML Web services and others. With NetScaler accelerators, Citrix customers will significantly optimise their entire set of legacy, client/server or three-tier applications delivered on our Presentation Server system," adds Templeton.

"The fit between Citrix and NetScaler is a great one. Both companies are committed to making customers successful and improving the experience for end-users accessing any application," says BV Jagadeesh, president and CEO of NetScaler.

"Collectively, Citrix and NetScaler have more than 23 years of experience in application-layer expertise and by combining our forces, we are uniquely positioned to deliver best-of-breed networking solutions," continues Jagadeesh.