People, you are looking at this with teary eyes. The reality is that Citrix management has struggled since about 2015 to tell and deliver a growth story. They made big moves and company repositioning without checking market viability (see Workspace, Sapho-what a waste, and the latest folly Wrike). Who really wanted these microapps? Whose kool aid did the ELT drink to move the whole company in that direction without an iota of evidence? Why pay $200M for a Sapho?
Here's a piee from the Citrix FAQ from back then:
https://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/news/citrix-sapho-faq.pdf
Citrix is the leader in secure, unified workspaces that give businesses and users access to all of their applications and data in one place. Citrix is acquiring Sapho’s leading micro-app platform to enhance the guided work capabilities within Citrix® Workspace, enabling people to work with even greater speed, intelligence and simplicity.
First, Citrix was no where near a leader and certainly not "the" leader in a unified Workspace. That has been Microsoft for a long-long-long time and many have attempted to dethrone the king and have died along the way. With that delusion came the rest of the moves.
Second, the core of Sapho was a series of projects done for a few large customers. There was no real product, no repeating revenue. So Citrix paid $200M for basically what could have been built for $5-10M. On top of that Citrix in its wisdom decided to move it to cloud and make microapps to check your PTO and made that sound like a big deal! Who checks their PTO every day and is that the most pressing enterprise productivity issue? Ge-z.
And once the ELT realized that their move was a dud, two heads rolled off JVR and PJ. And who was put in place- Joe Kim- of infamous Solarwinds fame, with junior league leadership under him.
Next came Wrike. Buy something for $2B, that Vista had already optimized after buying it for $700M (paying ~3X for 2 years worth of Vista work). And what rationale? Again, none. A complete non- sequitur. The ELT making its largest acquisition without a plan!
Why would anyone expect the company to survive two back-to-back amateur moves?
Vista, Elliot, and the rest of PE are necessary evils of the business world. They do the dirty work for shareholders who don't have a good way to telling management to get their act together. And they make fistfuls of money along the way.
So the question you should be asking is: Who opened the doors for Elliott in round one (2015) Elliott and Vista in round 2 (2020) to come in? The answer is blatantly obvious, without even requiring hindsight. Its Citrix leadership, starting with the ELT.
Finally, the same ELT is now flushed out. But not much is left to keep the place whole. Hence the reason for the two "divisions" that will be separately milked, carved and sold, along with the already separated Wrike.
Perfectly put, @uwn+1iFoPuPD. This deserved its own thread.