I have been watching for news of the new spinoff company for the line of collaboration products currently clustered under the Citrix Online operating division (GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining…). Citrix announced last November that the products would be spun off to a new, publicly-traded company.
At the time, I wrote that it was encouraging to see that the products would continue to be under the control of the people already familiar with their sales, support, and development. But my big question was whether operations would still be based in Goleta (near Santa Barbara, California) or would move to a new location, causing disruption to the workforce.
I still haven't seen any official name announcement, but a little search engine sleuthing turned up numerous job listings for "Citrix GetGo" on both the Citrix employment page and on third-party job sites. It looks like the new company will be headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. I saw some listings mentioning San Francisco itself as the location, while others mentioned alternate locations in Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Redwood City.
Just as one example, I can point to a Citrix job listing for VP DESIGN & USER EXPERIENCE, Citrix GetGo (aka "The GoTo Business").
The company blurb reads as follows:
Citrix GetGo
In November 2015, Citrix announced the spinoff of its GoTo family of products, including the industry leading communication and collaboration offerings GoToMeeting, GoToAssist, GoToMyPC, GoToWebinar, Grasshopper and OpenVoice. Together, these products will be the center of a new standalone business known as Citrix GetGo.
At Citrix GetGo, our mission is to create a more human, more intelligent way to connect. For over 10 years, we’ve been studying people and building delightful communications solutions for people and businesses around the globe. We have a deep understanding of how people want to work and a powerful product portfolio with technology built for business, but designed for people. Our tools enable our more than 2 million users to host nearly 200 million meetings/ events a year and connect with over 30 million participants. As we go forward, we are passionate about surfacing the intelligence underlying those communications, to deepen human connections and unleash our users to do amazing things.
We will be a leading, pure-play SaaS company with over $600 million in revenue that is strategically positioned for sustained, profitable growth.
That's as official as I need! GetGo also has a placeholder Facebook page that has no content yet and still places its location as Citrix HQ in Goleta. Another search turned up the official trademark application for the word mark in all caps.
The move from Southern California to Northern California will be a two-edged sword. It means that many experienced employees won't be willing or able to uproot and move with the company, so some product expertise and employee continuity may be lost. But being in the heart of the Bay Area tech community will let the company have access to a large workforce of cutting-edge software talent.
I expect we'll start seeing announcements fairly soon, along with a big marketing campaign to rebrand all the web conferencing products. But until then… You heard it here first!
