Further delaying competition is a five-year joint marketing and development agreement the companies entered in 1997. The agreement was the result of negotiations sparked by Microsoft's decision to revoke the license Citrix had to its software code, from which Citrix created technology that made Windows NT a multiuser platform. At that time, Citrix agreed to license this technology for $175 million to Microsoft, which based Windows NT Terminal Server Edition on it. Under the agreement, Citrix still has engineers working in Redmond, Wash., with Microsoft and continues to add value to Microsoft's platforms.

But Citrix can't continue to grow solely by adding functionality to Microsoft products. "Citrix must take its technology to other server platforms and to other types of remote presentation technologies, like Java," says Neil McDonald, VP of Gartner Group's networking group. Moving onto other server platforms, such as Unix, Java, HTML, and Extensible Markup Language, and developing high-end tools for ASPs, should be the company's leading priorities, McDonald says.

Dave Jones, Citrix's senior VP of sales, describes additional priorities: direct customer relationships, a higher profile, and international growth. Citrix has marketed its products primarily through 7,500 resellers worldwide and will continue to work closely with distributors. At the same time, the company will increase its direct involvement with customers.

"As we move from being viewed as a tactical, Band-Aid solution to the problem of remote application deployment to being seen as a strategic component of a company's overall architecture decision, we need to have a greater enterprise sales presence with Citrix consultants working directly with customers," Jones says.

For a company its size, Citrix has kept pretty quiet, analysts say--so quiet that Jones says he has talked to IS managers who didn't recognize the company's name, only to find out they use Citrix products. "We deploy a lot of applications, but not that many people know about us. We will turn up the volume about this computing approach and who we are," he says.

Since its founding in 1989, Citrix has grown steadily by selling software built on Microsoft operating systems. Its core technology is called the Independent Computing Architecture, which lets multiple users access applications with a range of thin devices from a remote server. Now that access to Internet application servers is commonplace, remote access to applications doesn't sound like a big deal. But in the early '90s, when Citrix introduced the technology that Independent Computing Architecture is based on, people were amazed, says Greg Blatnik, VP and analyst with Zona Research

"Citrix did something that had never been done before and hasn't been done since: It turned Windows NT into a multiuser operating system. Back then, people were blown away because demos looked as if the application was running locally when it could have been halfway across the country," Blatnik says.

Independent Computing Architecture, which lets IT departments deliver universal access to Windows applications without regard to client device, operating platform, network connection, or available bandwidth, is the technology basis for Citrix's primary server software products, MetaFrame and WinFrame.

Traditionally, enterprise IT departments have used WinFrame (which runs on Windows NT Server 3.51) and MetaFrame (which runs on Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition, and Windows 2000 server editions) to deliver applications to their users in smaller remote offices.

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