Virtual desktop solutions maker Citrix reported impressive gains for the first quarter of 2012, crediting a great deal of it to the success the company’s NetScaler VDI delivery platform has seen in the same period.

Citrix revealed net profit of 39 cents per share on revenue of $589.5 million, a bit more than the $562.4 analysts expected and an increase of 46 percent year over year.

The exact same percentage represents the sales growth NetScaler has seen.  That is partially thanks to the 400 XenDesktop sales that were bundled up with the virtual desktop optimization service, and another 10 percent was accounted by NetScaler SDX. The appliance is a consolidated version of the original product, and allows users to run multiple NetScaler instances at the same time.  It gained 20 percent in popularity within just three months.

A total of about 600 customers purchased various editions of NetScaler and sales didn’t disappoint either, giving Citrix a rather valid reason to brag about it to its main competitor, VMware (which got the honorary implicit mention.)

The same optimism carried over to the augmented annual guidance the company published during the call.

“Citrix expects fiscal 2012 adjusted earnings in a range of $2.75 per share to $2.79 per share on revenue between $2.53 billion and $2.56 billion,” writes Bloomberg.  “Second-quarter adjusted earnings are anticipated between 58 cents and 59 cents per share on revenue in a range of $605 million to $615 million.

“Wall Street forecasts full-year earnings of $2.72 per share on revenue of $2.51 billion and second-quarter earnings of 63 cents per share on revenue of $603.5 million.”

Earlier this month Citrix made an expansion slightly beyond its core niche with the acquisition of Podio for an undisclosed amount–a Danish cloud collaboration startup with a social focus.