Contact: Scott Denne
Citrix has kicked off a restructuring program by selling its CloudPlatform and CloudPortal businesses to Accelerite, a unit of Persistent Systems. Following the attentions of an activist shareholder and an extended streak of lackluster growth – both top- and bottom-line – Citrix disclosed a strategic reorganization late last year that will see it spin off its GoTo SaaS business as an independent public company and divest or shut down several other product lines.
The assets it’s unloading today are those it obtained in the $200m purchase of Cloud.com back in 2011. Starting with the 2003 reach for Expertcity (now its GoTo division), Citrix was an active acquirer – averaging almost one deal per quarter in the years since. That transaction and the 40 that followed were an attempt to decrease its reliance on its terminal server product. Now that Citrix has narrowed its focus again, there’s plenty of fodder for other divestitures.
The company has also announced that it will stop investing in Bytemobile, which optimizes Internet video delivery and, like CloudPlatform and CloudPortal, is not linked to its newly minted focus on securing the delivery of apps and data. Today’s deal is the first divestiture we’ve recorded from Citrix and though it will likely be a net seller for the next few quarters, it hasn’t completely stopped buying. Citrix also announced today that it has acquired desktop virtualization assets from Comtrade.
We’ll have a more detailed report on Accelerite’s acquisition of Citrix’s assets in tomorrow’s 451 Market Insight.
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