About a month ago, Citrix and Global IP Solutions, a provider of IP technology, entered into a OEM license and distribution agreement to provide VoIP and PSTN audio conferencing for GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.
I'm curious what happened to the $26.6M investment Citrix made in Nov 2008 to acquire VAPPS, a provider of VoIP solutions. From my understanding, the acquisition was made so Citrix could provide better VoIP to its customers. Was the VAPPS integration more challenging than expected? Did management opt to scrap the integration project in favor of OEMing with a VoIP provider instead? Was positioning VoIP as an audio solution hard for the Citrix sales team?
I thought the VAPPS acquisition made sense but like all acquisitions, execution and integration can be very challenging.
Global IP Solution's Voice ConferenceEngine and VoiceEngine are the two components that will be utilized by Citrix.
I don't think the Vapps purchase was all that great of a deal for Citrix.
Seem like they paid way too much for what Vapps had.
I know of a person that did a deal with Vapps and it was never working well - hopefully Citrix will work the bugs out that Vapps couldn't.
Maybe they realized it was a dead end technology and purchased the GIPS to make up for their mistake.
Good luck with that Citrix
Posted by: Roger | March 17, 2009 at 04:34 PM