Citrix Systems Inc. on Thursday announced its acquisition of Expertcity Inc., the Santa Barbara, Calif., company that makes GoToMyPC and GoToAssist, in a cash-stock transaction valued at approximately $225 million.
The deal expands Citrixs portfolio of offerings to the desktop in what Citrix officials are touting as a move that will allow the company to offer end-to-end access infrastructure solutions. Citrix currently provides server-based solutions, supporting more than 120,000 customers in a market it expects to grow to $8 billion to $10 billion within the next five years.
GoToMyPC is a popular tool among integrators and IT consultants providing remote support services. It allows trouble-shooters, administrators and end users to access remote desktop PCs via an Internet connection. Similarly, GoToAssist allows support technicians to provide online help-desk and call-center assistance, training, and customer collaboration remotely via the Web.
“This acquisition extends our on-demand access value to include the applications and information that live on individual desktop PCs,” said Mark Templeton, president and chief executive officer for Citrix. “Our customers will get scalable, secure and managed access solutions for even greater information security, employee productivity and enterprise agility.”
GoToMyPC is preconfigured with AES (Advanced Encryption Standards) security, dual password requirements and end-to-end user authentication to securely access remote applications, even in the absence of a firewall.
GoToAssist, a Web-based software service, uses a secure, permission-based scheme to allow trouble-shooters to share users desktop PC screens.