Nexus on a roll with third exit in 12 mths; Cloud.com acquired by Citrix

Citrix Systems announced it has completed the acquisition of Cloud.com, a market leading provider of software infrastructure platforms for cloud providers. The company's innovative CloudStack product line helps providers of all types deploy and manage simple, cost-effective cloud services that are scalable, secure, and open by design. This acquisition further establishesCitrix as a leader in infrastructure for the rapidly growing cloud provider market.The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The transition from the PC Era to the Cloud Era is expected to fuel a massive build out in cloud infrastructure, creating a new market projected to exceed $11 billion by the end of 2013, according to industry analysts[i]. This market will feature thousands of providers of all shapes and sizes, offering a vast array of new cloud services ranging from business, infrastructure and development offerings, to consumer, mobile and gaming services. Most of the clouds that service this market will look nothing like traditional enterprise datacenters. They will run on radically different platforms purpose-built for cloud computing ' platforms designed from the ground up to deliver multi-tier, multi-tenant services in the simplest and most cost-effective way. The world's largest and most successful public clouds are all built this way today.

TheCloud.com product line is not a traditional enterprise server virtualization platform with cloud management layered on top. It is a powerful, hypervisor-agnostic solution designed from the ground up to help providers build clouds the way the world's largest and most successful public clouds are built ' simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient.This proven approach has helped Cloud.com customers around the world roll out new cloud services up to 50 times faster, at one fifth the cost of alternative solutions[ii].

With the addition of Cloud.com, Citrix now offers a complete portfolio of virtualization, orchestration and networking solutions purpose built for the Cloud Era ' solutions that are not only among the market leaders individually, but also designed to help customers avoid vendor lock-in by letting them usethe hardware, software, management products and service providersof their choice.

The addition of Cloud.com brings Citrix an incredibly talented team that includes some of the world's most experienced cloud computing experts. Cloud.com CEO Sheng Liang will continue to lead the design, architecture and technology of the CloudStack product line, reporting to Sameer Dholakia, group vice president and general manager of the newly-formed Cloud Platforms product group at Citrix.

Mark Templeton, President and CEO, Citrix Systems, Inc. says "As the industry moves into the Cloud Era, Citrix is committed to leading the charge with powerful solutions that make the cloud more open, more secure, and more personal. We are delighted to welcome the Cloud.com team to the Citrix family to focus our combined efforts on helping customers of all sizes make a difference in business, and in the lives of their customers and employees."

Sheng Liang, CEO and Founder, Cloud.com says "Cloud.com is the platform behindmany of the world's most innovative and successful clouds. Joining forces withCitrix willdramatically accelerate our mission to help customers achieve all the promise cloud computing has to offer, in a way that's open, secure and efficient."

Jim Curry, GM of Cloud Builders, Rackspace says "Citrix has been a leader in the creation of OpenStack, assembling an impressive team of developers and creating Project Olympus to take open cloud-scale technology into the market. With the addition of the Cloud.com team, Citrix is furthering their commitment to OpenStack, ensuring that the OpenStack platform and APIs are even more widely available to customers everywhere."