Citrix: Business 'Transformation' Prompts Global Layoffs

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Citrix on Wednesday confirmed it is laying off workers globally as part of its accelerating transformation to a subscription/cloud-based business model, and to invest in high-growth initiatives.

Citrix spokesman Eric Armstrong said notifications are going out globally and “out of respect for those impacted, we are not sharing the number of impacted employees globally or in any specific location.” Citrix has 8,000 employees.

According to a WRAL TechWire report, “dozens” of workers in Raleigh, North Carolina, have been told they are losing their jobs. Some 40 people were involved in the first round of mandatory meetings early Wednesday, it said.

“It is anticipated that the shift to the cloud will only pick up speed and to accomplish the company’s goals, Citrix is rebalancing investments and winding down certain products,” Armstrong said. “These actions include Octoblu (a Citrix Internet of Things (IoT) messaging and automation platform) to focus development efforts on building IoT solutions atop widely used IoT platforms, and Right Signature, which will become a feature of ShareFile Enterprise.”

In addition, Citrix is strategically repositioning two important products to drive long-term growth and align more with company direction, he said. It is shifting ShareFile to focus more heavily on the enterprise market to better align and leverage the company’s broader go-to-market motions, he said. It also is pivoting XenMobile to the cloud to accelerate innovation and focus go-to-market plans with key enterprise mobility platform partners, he said.

“These decisions, although difficult, allow us to accelerate our transformation and to reinvest in the new skills, teams and business processes throughout the organization that will ensure that our company continues to grow and deliver long-term value for our customers, partners, employees and shareholders,” Armstrong said.

Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan’s Roopashree Honnachari

Roopashree Honnachari, Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan business communications services and cloud computing services industry director, said Citrix, like many of its competitors, is facing the challenge of embracing cloud-based business models that calls for a subscription-based billing.

“Creating customer stickiness in the era of cloud is tough on companies, as the traditional hardware-based solutions and the long-term contracting model ensuring sustained revenues are fast disappearing,” she said. “Furthermore, the advent of … SD-WAN is threatening the status quo of standalone WAN optimization solution vendors, such as Citrix.

While Citrix has launched an integrated SD-WAN offering with WAN optimization functionality built into it, it still is fairly new in the market, Honnachari said.

“The restructuring through headcount reduction could help the company control costs, and invest in (go-to-market) initiatives for the new products,” she said.

In May, Citrix rolled out multiple offerings that it said will help move businesses to a “secure digital workspace.”