I think we have a tremendous opportunity to be a consolidator, and I intend to leverage that opportunity, said Mr Templeton. We have the financial strength and the right currency, because we have shown that we have made two successful acquisitions last year.

Citrix began 2004 with the $225 million acquisition of Expertcity, which gave it hosted remote desktop and collaboration tools including the GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting brands.

It ended the year with the $50 million cash buyout of SSL VPN security appliance vendor Net6, whose hardware it has just announced it has integrated into its Access Suite in order to offer users secure, clientless remote access to any enterprise application from any device, including many mobile gadgets with enough horsepower to run a browser.

Citrix’s performance, meanwhile, was much improved in its most recent quarter, the company having gone through a re-jig of its North American operation that saw 40% of its sales force either let go or redeployed where their skills are better suited, as Mr Templeton puts it. Its quarter ended March 31 saw sales up 25% year on year, thanks in part to those acquisitions.

But the question for the company now is how it increases the rate at which it wins new customers. While its total revenues grew by 25% in its most recent quarter, it said that product license revenue was up just 3%, with revenue from license updates up 31% and revenue from services up 17%.

There is also the perennial question of whether it will face stiffer competition from Microsoft, with which it needs to work in order to provide its bread-and-butter remote access to Windows applications, but with which it also competes to some extent.

As Microsoft seeks to give users good reason to upgrade to new versions of its server operating system, it will add more and more functionality that makes the OS more flexible and easier to run in a remote manner, potentially obviating the need for users to run Citrix to handle that particular task.

Asked whether Longhorn will pose more of a competitive threat to Citrix’s core business, Mr Templeton replied, Yes that’s true, it’s clear that Microsoft will make its operating system more and more capable – there’s no question. With Longhorn they will enhance the capability to work on a server basis. But we will likewise add additional value to our own Access Platform, which will give people more and more reasons to buy Citrix.

As Mr Templeton points out, whatever additional capabilities Longhorn or prior Microsoft server OS upgrades feature, they are unlikely ever to offer remote access to Windows applications for non-Windows clients. Citrix, on the other hand, offers remote access to Windows and other applications on Windows, Unix, Linux, mobile, thin client and other devices.

But there is still the threat of at least some increased competition. Hence Citrix has used acquisitions, internal development and partnerships to expand its offering beyond simply giving remote access to Windows applications.

Access Suite 4.0, due in the second quarter, includes not only a new and more scalable version of Presentation Server, but also the Access Gateway SSL VPN which it acquired in December, and password manager for enterprise single sign-on and ID management.

With Microsoft planning enhancements that compete with the company, Citrix needs to keep moving too, broadening its capabilities and hence retaining its differentiation from simple remote access of Windows applications.

Asked if the Microsoft threat is part of the motivation for building the Citrix Access Platform – partly via acquisition – Mr Templeton replied, Yes, that’s true. We need people to buy into the platform, that is true. The Citrix Access Platform is also key for its differentiation from the vast number of competitors in the remote access, hosted collaboration, SSL VPN, single sign-on, ID management and other markets in which it has products.