Cloud Software Group Inc., the parent company of Citrix Systems, NetScaler and Tibco Software, has reportedly laid off thousands of employees in the latest case of tech companies laying off staff.

CRN broke the news and although there has been no official confirmation of the layoffs from Citrix or Cloud Software Group yet, Citrix employees are posting on Twitter Inc. about being laid off.

According to CRN, the layoffs are “brutal,” with a source telling the publication that “it’s a sad day for a company that pioneered the VDI [virtual desktop infrastructure] market.” Another source told CRN that the layoffs were the “largest Citrix has ever had.”

The layoffs are said to include much of Citrix’s commercial sales organization and some channel-facing employees. Other employees known to be laid off include those in networking, application and delivery.

Among those laid off is now former Senior Solution Engineer James Priest, who was cut after eight years at the company. Priest has gained a job at ServiceNow Inc. Not all former Citrix workers will be as fortunate in a down market in which tech companies are slashing jobs across the board.

After 8 amazing years my journey at Citrix has come to an end. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the amazing people at Citrix, especially the ANZ team, and most especially the SE team. A huge thankyou to the Citrites, partners and customers who made my journey so rewarding.

— James Priest (@TheSmileySE) January 10, 2023

After years as a publicly listed company, it was announced Citrix was set to go private in January 2022 following sustained pressure from activist investor Elliott Management Corp. Under the deal, Elliott’s private equity firm Evergreen Coast Capital and Vista Equity Partners acquired Citrix for $16.5 billion.

Tech acquisitions take time and the deal did not close until Sept. 30. Upon closing, Citrix was merged with Tibco, with services that include NetScaler, ShareFile and XenServer coming under the Cloud Software Group umbrella.

Citrix was founded in 1989 and anyone who worked in finance in the 1990s or early 2000s would have stumbled across a system powered by Citrix at one point or another. Although today VMware Inc. is arguably the better-known company for providing virtual machines, there was a point in the past when Citrix was synonymous for the concept.

As recently as 2015, Citrix held a 40% market share in virtual client computing, but VMware was chipping away at that figure. Notably, 2015 was also the same time that Elliott Management was reportedly taking a “keen interest” in Citrix.

Layoffs in the tech industry have become a nearly daily occurrence as the global economy goes from bad to worse. San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup ScaleAI Inc. also announced today that it was laying off 20% of its staff.

Image: Citrix