Of course I owe it to iLinc to start off the parade, since their statement was the impetus for the project. Mark Yeager is vice president of marketing at the company. Mark says that as a direct competitor to WebEx in the same market space, the announcement has been a short-term boost for iLinc. Some prospective customers who were making a vendor decision have elected not to get in the middle of an acquisition where they don’t know howsupport and contracts will be handled by the new owners. He says iLinc can also push the idea of being solely focused on conferencing, while the service is not central to Cisco’s business. He is also delighted with the valuation that Cisco came up with for WebEx, as it may make the investor community smile a little more brightly on other public web conferencing companies.

Mark also points out that the fear and uncertainty factor in the new ownership affects potential business partners looking to work with a web conferencing vendor. A company in a space such as CRM, social collaboration, or e-Learning that wants to add integration with a web conferencing vendor might prefer to do business with a smaller, more focused entity.

Mark finished with a compliment to the WebEx "sales and marketing machine." They have been remarkably important in promoting and evangelizing web conferencing as a mainstream business tool and Mark says he hopes that Cisco doesn’t "crush" the new acquisition as they have occasionally done with past purchases.

Isaac Garcia came at the question from his perspective as CEO and founder of Central Desktop, a company that combines web conferencing with a larger suite of shared workspace collaboration services. He pointed at WebEx’s web-based sales model for small and medium business (SMB) customers. It is largely a matter of making sure they are seen everywhere on the web and letting prospects come to them. Isaac saysthat Cisco doesn’t have that kind of an approach and will have to learn from WebEx if they are to act on their statements about using WebEx as an entree into the SMB world. Isaac thinks it is more likely that WebEx will become more of an enterprise tool than the other way ’round. He says it is very difficult to move downmarket from a large, expensive, full-featured enterprise utility to something more palatable to an SMB world. You can’t afford to remove features and functionality to justify a lower pricebecause your differentiation goes away.

Although Central Desktop offers its own version of a unified collaboration platform, Isaac doesn’t feel that he is likely to get into competition with a Cisco/WebEx offering in that area. He says that the larger company has to justify and maintain a massive sales overhead with big ticket enterprise sales. Central Desktop as a smaller vendor can scale their operations to handle volumes of lower-priced sales to SMBs. As he put it: "They won’t want to compete in the small market. It’s too bloody down here! Largerenterprises with their large channels are not as precise and efficient as many of the smaller vendors are."

Brainshark offers yet another view of the deal, as they don’t compete in the web conferencing arena at all. They offer an alternative to live webcasts with recorded events that integrate lead tracking services. Joe Gustafson, the CEO of Brainshark, was initially surprised at the thought that Cisco would be interested in an application software purchase that didn’t directly link to their core hardware business.But he thinks that all the attention given to the use of web-delivered communications is good for the industry as a whole. He had been worried that publicity and attention had been languishing, especially with Microsoft all but ignoring web conferencing after buying Placeware and renaming it to Live Meeting. He is interested in seeing whether Cisco buries WebEx in their platform as an enabling technology supporting an overall infrastructure play or keeps working on diverse applications such as WebEx’s Sales Center,Training Center, Event Center, and so on. He thinks that if Cisco leaves the WebEx business alone, it is likely to be more successful and help the industry hit the high growth projections put forth by several analysts. Joe was skeptical about Cisco’s ability to move down into the SMB market as well. They have traditionally sold to enterprise IT departments who like to control everything centrally. SaaS is attractive to business units who don’t want to worry about setup and maintenance. They just want touse a service and move on with their business.

I made overtures to two of WebEx’s most well known direct competitors… Adobe (with its Acrobat Connect product) and Citrix (makers of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar). Neither company wanted to be interviewed on the subject. Citrix did send along a prepared statement in an email message saying that Cisco’spurchase "underscores the huge market potential of real time collaboration technologies." Nothing too earth-shaking there.

And as always, everybody waits with bated breath to see when and whether the long-touted Unified Communications vision from Microsoft will come to fruition with web conferencing tied in to all its other functions.

Comments

Today I received a comment from R Person. It reads:

Ken,
Isn’t this pretty much in line with what we have come to expect from Citrix? I know in the past they have been defendants in multiple law suits over cybersquatting, making false claims and statements on their website, and other predatory marketing techniques. I think they have proven themselves to be very good at marketing their services, but not in the most honest or fair manner. Comments?

Given the blanket accusatory nature of the comment, the lack of a first name, company affiliation, or email address, you might be justified in writing this off as a self-serving attack by a competitor. And you might be right. Or it could be someone just trying to protect themselves from email crawling spambots. No way to tell. But let’s take a hard look at the points raised.

I am only aware of one cybersquatting lawsuit against Citrix. It was opened in February of 2005 by WebEx and accused Citrix of creating multiple domain names designed to intentionally confuse people trying to find WebEx products and information online and hijack them to the Citrix website instead. WebEx issued a press release about their claim and it picked up a fair amount of coverage. After a great deal of searching, I haven’t been able to find any mention of a resolution to the suit and the websites are long since gone. An interesting commentary on the brouhaha back from the period is this one from Brian Madden. He points out that the suit could be seen as a marketing play by WebEx rather than a real attempt to get legal satisfaction. This does not excuse or lessen the incorrectness of the domain registrations by the Citrix employee.

The only other complaint I was able to find about Citrix promotional practices came from web conferencing blogger Robin Good in his Kolabora blog. Interestingly, it was also from February of 2005. He didn’t like the “free trial” of GoToMeeting which ended up with a charge on his credit card. He did point out in an update that they had followed up, reimbursed him, and tried to improve their process. Recently I was able to get a free trial of their software with no credit card information, so it seems that they did change for the better.

As far as false claims, the only complaint I could turn up in my research was in a blog from the SVP of Marketing at F5 (a Citrix competitor in the networking market). It was pretty tame stuff… he didn’t like some bloated marketing fluff in a press release (“extends our leadership” “advances state-of-the-art web application delivery”). Honestly, every tech company is guilty of that kind of nonsense and I don’t count it as a sign of willful moral decay and deception.

So Mr./Ms. Person, yes, I think Citrix could and should be more careful in the way they conduct their promotional and marketing activities. These things do have a way of contributing to the general marketplace impression of a company. Am I ready to lump them in with sleazy used car salesmen and infomercials selling miracle weight loss diets? No.

Comments

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With a background in software development and marketing, Ken has been producing and delivering business webinars since 1999. His background in public speaking, radio, stage acting, and training has given him a unique perspective on what it takes to create a compelling and effective presentation. Currently Ken offers consulting services through his company Webinar Success (www.wsuccess.com).

VARs/resellers were the main source of IT technologies for less than half of respondents.

The online survey had a reasonable number of respondents (124), but the results were not as unquestionable as they might have been – Citrix admitted to a “margin of error of 6.75 percent with a 90 percent confidence rate.”

Still, the company’s conclusions seem clear.

In Citrix’s evaluation of the study, Bert Wakeley, director of State and Local Government, said, “State and local IT buyers are one-hundred percent focused on program performance. Their emphasis is on maximizing the value of the taxpayer’s dollar and deploying IT solutions that improve citizen services. The survey results point to an opportunity for IT providers to improve their relationships with state and local executives through deeper partnerships and continued high service levels.”

The last lines of Wakeley’s comment reflect on the finding that survey respondents “ranked personal relationships with a sales representative’ as only moderately important.”

And only 38 percent of respondents “characterize their IT providers as trusted partners, rather than mere product providers.”

“The survey results underline the market’s requirement for best-value, performance-tested solutions,” Wakeley said. “Buyers will not tolerate distractions. They are looking for reliable, easy-to-procure tools, enabling them to stay focused on their mission of supporting the business of state and local government.” VARs would do well to take heed of the survey’s results.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

This will improve the access capabilities available in the forthcoming version of Windows Server codenamed “Longhorn.”

Specifically, the agreement with Microsoft:

— Includes a new technology collaboration agreement to further enhance the overall extensibility of Windows Terminal Server;

— Formalizes Citrix’s continued access to Microsoft Windows Server code; and,

— Provides for patent cross-licensing between both companies.

The five-year agreement paves the way for further improvements in the Citrix MetaFrame Access Suite, which runs on Microsoft Windows Terminal Server. For existing customers, the agreement will provide enhanced collaboration to achieve continuity to migrate to MetaFrame Presentation Server on Windows “Longhorn” Server.

“This is an exciting agreement that will help us better serve our customers’ access needs through the next generation of Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system,” said Mark Templeton, president and chief executive officer for Citrix. “Improved integration with Microsoft’s server operating systems will help us deliver solutions that are simpler to implement and manage, and will provide a smooth migration path for our mutual customers.

“Today’s agreement continues a long partnership with Microsoft that has helped Citrix successfully extend Microsoft solutions to over 120,000 enterprises through innovation and partnership. From an industry standpoint, Citrix believes this kind of patent and technology licensing agreement is a driver of innovation in the software ecosystem that, in the end, delivers great value to customers.”

“We are excited to expand our business relationship with Citrix Systems in order to better serve our customers,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Microsoft Windows Server Division. “This collaboration will result in an improved and more extensible Windows Server platform for ISVs that broadens the solutions for Windows server and ensures that Windows “Longhorn” Server will be the best platform for access solutions available in the market. Furthermore, this technology and patent licensing agreement provides an important context for our collaboration with Citrix.”

The agreement builds on a long history of collaboration between the two companies that began in 1997 when Citrix licensed components of its technology to Microsoft as the base for Microsoft’s Terminal Server functionality. Over the years, Citrix and Microsoft have worked closely together on development initiatives, as well as marketing and sales efforts worldwide. Last year, Citrix was named ‘Global ISV Partner of the Year’ for Microsoft.

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