SANTA CLARA, CA » 6/26/2008 » Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced European language and telephone system support for the Citrix® EasyCall™ feature in Citrix® XenDesktop™ . EasyCall, which is also available as a feature of Citrix® XenApp™ and Citrix® NetScaler™, provides the simplest and most intuitive way of seamlessly integrating communications into any application. With its newest release, EasyCall now includes German, French and Spanish (Castilian) language capabilities as well as integration with leading European telephone systems from Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent. As a result, customers delivering virtual desktops with XenDesktop can now provide an even richer experience to end users in more countries around the world.
As leading software companies begin integrating communications capabilities into their newer applications, customers are beginning to recognize additional cost savings and user productivity. Using EasyCall, customers can now instantly communications-enable all of their existing applications as well with no modification to the applications, telephones or phone systems required. Communication-enabling applications with EasyCall enables users to initiate instant click-to-call capabilities from any telephone number within any application using their company’s existing corporate phone system and rates — thus increasing worker productivity and saving costs on phone charges for users working from home or other remote locations.
First generation virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions simply moved desktops into the datacenter in an attempt to save costs. Next generation desktop delivery systems like XenDesktop dynamically assemble virtualized desktops at runtime and deliver them over the network on demand with LAN-like performance and a rich user experience. In addition to reducing costs for IT, this approach provides end users with a desktop experience that is often even better than using a traditional PC. By incorporating communications capabilities like EasyCall as a built-in feature, XenDesktop now takes this user experience advantage to another level while saving companies further costs in telephony infrastructure and phone service charges.
To engage EasyCall, users simply hover over any telephone number in any application and a small pop-up dialer appears over the number. When the user clicks on the dialer, EasyCall initiates a call between the user’s preferred telephone – office, mobile or home – and the destination number, employing that user’s corporate telephone system and billing the call at their standard corporate rates, regardless of where the user is actually located.
“EasyCall is another great example of how Citrix is working to improve the user experience by integrating value-added services. Expanded language and telephone system support extend this increased value to our European customers and to new products like XenDesktop,” said Barry Phillips, group vice president and general manager of the Advanced Solutions Group at Citrix. “We believe desktop virtualization should provide a better user experience than a traditional PC and are excited about new capabilities like EasyCall that are helping to make that vision a reality.”
How EasyCall Saves Money
EasyCall works with both legacy and IP-enabled telephone systems, such as those offered by Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent, providing advanced communication capabilities without the need to switch to IP telephony, saving companies thousands of dollars in unnecessary upgrade costs. In addition, because EasyCall can seamlessly discover phone numbers from any application, additional integration pieces are not required, which saves dollars otherwise spent on integration services.
EasyCall enables additional cost savings for remote users. Employees working away from the office can use EasyCall to dial internationally using negotiated corporate telephone system rates instead of mobile phone international long distance rates. Employees in an informal outbound contact center can make more calls per day as EasyCall automates the dialing of calls from a customer information application. This equates to having fewer contact agents and generating more revenue per day.
Pricing and Availability
EasyCall is included as a standard feature of Citrix XenDesktop Platinum Edition, Citrix NetScaler Platinum Edition and Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition at no additional charge and is available today through authorized resellers worldwide. Customers receive entitlement to a specific number of EasyCall licenses when purchasing or upgrading to the Platinum Edition of these products. EasyCall licenses are activated via a Citrix EasyCall Gateway that plugs easily into any corporate phone system and can normally be installed in under an hour. The suggested retail price of a Citrix ®EasyCall™ Gateway appliance is $3,500 and can support approximately 4,000 end users.
About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 215,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 8,000 partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.
For Citrix Investors
This release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release, which are not strictly historical statements, involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks associated with the uncertainty in the IT spending environment and the risk of a downturn in economic conditions generally, revenue growth and recognition of revenue, products, their development and distribution, product demand and pipeline, competitive factors, the Company’s key strategic relationships, acquisitions and related integration risks as well as other risks detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citrix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the announcements described herein.