Citrix, which provides distributed workplace, virtualization, and remote access solutions, announced that it’s investing in Gizmox and Graymatics through its Citrix Startup Accelerator, the company’s startup incubator division.
Citrix Virtualization with VisualWebGui
Gizmox’s VisualWebGui is an open source platform utilizing .NET framework that enables AJAX web apps that are virtualized through standard browsers. In terms of immediate tactical value, Gizmox’s platform appears to be a natural fit for Citrix virtualization technologies. The technology will allow various enterprise applications to run through browsers and mobile platforms without the need for plugins. Gizmox boasts of over 1 million downloads of its software and 35,000 applications being developed using VisualWebGui at organizations such as SAP, IBM, Visa, and others.
VP of Citrix Labs and CTO Office Chair Martin Duursma commented on the motivation for the move:
“With the proliferation of consumer devices from tablets and Smartphones to unique web-optimized devices like Google ChromeBooks, users are demanding to bring these devices into the workplace. Our vision is to provide enterprises with the virtual computing infrastructure needed to provide anywhere, anytime access to corporate resources. We found Visual WebGui technology to be an innovative and exciting extension of this vision. Our strategic investment in Gizmox is aimed at advancing technology to better address emerging enterprise HTML5-based web, cloud and mobile needs,”
Citrix is aiming to capitalize on the needs of the distributed workplace. Citrix’ investment reveals its aspirations in the growing mobile cloud workspace market. VisualWebGui will bolster Citrix’ capability to serve enterprises with robust applications delivered through any device channel.
Graymatics: A Gray Matter?
The Citrix investment in Graymatics is more difficult to decipher. Graymatics appears to be in a secretive development phase, as the startup has chosen to reveal very few details about themselves. However, their tag line is “cognitive media processing” and their mission is to “Organize rich media data over the Internet, networked video systems & proprietary media sources using a highly scalable contextual digital media processing platform.” On their careers page, the Graymatics team is seeking engineers to aid development of scalable video processing systems, suggesting a specific focus on video.
Dr. Abhijit Shanbhag, the CEO of the startup, has extensive technical management skills that focus on hardware signal processing. The Chief scientist of the company, Dr. Bernard Widrow, has a research history focusing on adaptive signal processing/control systems, neural networks, and human memory. In terms of leadership, the startup is well prepared to develop rich media processing technology. Graymatics might be attempting to create a hardware/software solution that utilizes similar processing methods as the human brain.
Citrix made very few revealing comments about the investment in Graymatics. Michael Harries, senior director of the Citrix Startup Accelerator, only wrote these specific comments in the company blog:
“Media and video are an enormous part of our internet experience today. So it gives me great pleasure to welcome Graymatics to the Citrix Startup Accelerator family. This is a company on the forefront of cloud innovation from a number of directions that will become clear over the coming years.”
What do you think about the Citrix investments? How will they leverage the two companies’ strengths? Where is Citrix headed? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
[Photo courtesy of citrix.]