Citrix To Buy Ardence To Strengthen App Virtualization

Ardence picked up a CRN Best in Show award at IBM PartnerWorld this year for Ardence Data Center, which helped one of its customers cut its server provisioning process from hours to minutes. The company's software for real-time operating system provisioning is used by clients such as Time Warner Cable to deliver virtual PCs to call-center representatives, allowing one master image to run virtually on hundreds of machines.

Ardence has some 100 employees in Waltham, Mass. Citrix, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., plans to maintain Ardence's current staff and offices, running the company as a subsidiary reporting to Management Systems Group (MSG) general manager Lou Shipley. Citrix formed MSG in May when it purchased Reflectent, a Westford, Mass.-based application performance monitoring software maker. Reflectent CEO Shipley stayed on to head the newly created unit.

Citrix will continue selling Ardence's product line as it as and will maintain Ardence's existing partnership and reseller alliances, some of which overlap with Citrix's channel, according to Shipley. Eventually, Citrix may push Ardence's products out to its broader partner set, but the focus is for Ardence to continue as a standalone business, he said.

Ardence has a number of OEM alliances, including one with Dell that drives "a pretty big portion of our sales," according to Jeff Hibbard, Ardence's vice president of marketing. The Ardence Dell SmartClient delivers operating systems and software applications to client PCs from network servers, using Ardence's streaming software platform.

Citrix plans to put Ardence's technology to work in conjunction with its flagship Citrix Presentation Server, which provides end users with access to server-based applications. The company was already working on a desktop application streaming product, Project Tarpon, which it expects to complement Ardence's offerings.

Citrix expects the deal to close in early 2007, pending regulatory approvals.