The first question usually asked by the Accidental Citrix Admin is “what is Citrix?”.  There are two ways the term “Citrix” is used: as a specific product or as the name of a company that provides that product.  Usually, when “Citrix” is mentioned, the term is referring to software used to allow multiple user access to one or more applications hosted on another computer (normally a server).  The company, Citrix, refers to that capability as Application Virtualization. The product which provides that capability is now called Citrix Virtual Apps, and it was rebranded to that name in May 2018.  Before then it was called:

• XenApp (2008)
• Presentation Server (2005)
• MetaFrame XP Presentation Server (2003)
• MetaFrame XP (2001)
• MetaFrame (1998)
• MultiWin (1997)
• WinFrame (1995)
• WinView (1993)
• Citrix Multi-User (1991)
• Citrix MULTIUSER OS/2 (1990)

Citrix, the company, was founded in 1989 and I started working with MULTIUSER OS/2 in late 1989 or early 1990.  There were still vertical market application vendors using that product as late as the summer of 2003.  Citrix has primarily been known for their Application Virtualization product Citrix Virtual Apps but there are 15 distinct product families listed on the Citrix.com web page:

• Citrix Workspace
• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
• Citrix Content Collaboration
• Citrix Endpoint Management
• Citrix Managed Desktops
• Citrix Hypervisor
• ShareFile
• Citrix ADC
• Citrix Application Delivery Management
• Citrix Gateway
• Citrix Intelligent Traffic Management
• Citrix SD-WAN
• Citrix Web App Firewall
• Citrix Analytics for Security
• Citrix Analytics for Performance

What is Citrix?  Citrix is a company that offers a wide range of products to serve almost any application delivery needs a business may have.  From the smallest business to the largest global spanning corporations, Citrix has products to help deliver your applications to your users in the most cost-efficient manner possible.