Citrix Systems said Monday it plans to buy Orbital Data, a San Mateo, Calif.-based maker of software that optimizes application delivery over WANs.

The $50-million deal, in which Citrix also will assume $300,000 in unvested stock-based options for Orbital, is expected to be closed this quarter. A privately held company, Orbital was founded in 2002 and has 60 employees.

Plans call for Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Citrix to reintroduce Orbital's product line under the Citrix WANScaler brand. That line, as well as the Citrix's NetScaler products, will become part of the Citrix Application Networking Group in San Jose, Calif.

Orbital's WAN optimization solution easily plugs into corporate networks and applies performance-boosting techniques for each data flow without requiring configuration or management changes, according to Citrix.

The solution will accelerate the delivery of applications to remote offices, small branches and mobile workers, Citrix said. For example, it's expected to speed client/server and Web applications delivered using Citrix's flagship product, Citrix Presentation Server, and NetScaler by as much as five times.