Templeton leads Citrix, a $1.4 billion company

Mark Templeton

Citrix Systems President, CEO

When Mark Templeton signed on as vice president of marketing of Citrix in 1995, he was barely out of his 30s. The company, with revenues of $95 million, wasn’t yet 10 years old and was largely unheard-of outside the confines of the “techie” world.

Today, Templeton is the president and CEO of the Fort Lauderdale company, a public company that specializes in making information available on demand. It had 2008 revenues of $1.4 billion, has 4, 600 employees and counts as its clients all 100 of the Fortune 100 and 99 percent of the magazines’ Global 500.

It has offices in Sydney, London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Cambridge (England), Malaysia, South Korea, and partnerships in India and China. While Citrix might not yet be a household name as it celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, among its better-known offerings are GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting and GoToAssist.

Templeton, 55, and the speaker at WorldCity’s Global Connections event on June 24, did not see the extraordinary success coming.

“Not a clue, not a clue,” Templeton said with a laugh. “I pinch myself every day. Good luck and blessings are part of it. Hard work is required. Ton of good fortune, timing, lots of things outside your control.”

In the Miami Herald’s recent Executive Compensation Survey, Templeton was listed at No. 25 in South Florida in total annual compensation, at $4.29 million.

While it has been an exciting ride, filled with rapid growth, rapid hiring and acquisitions, today Templeton and Citrix find themselves, like nearly everyone else, in a tough global economy.

Its work force headcount is down 8 percent from its peak. Last year, its Europe-Middle East-Africa business was down 11 percent, Asia down 9 percent and the Americas were essentially flat, he said. It has been buying back its stock to bolster the price.

This year, “so far, so good,” he said. “Given the economic environment, flat is the new growth. There is still lots of volatility on how decisions are made to spend. Probably a couple of quarters until things settle down, become reliable.”

As Templeton and Citrix work through the challenging economy, he remains buoyed by what the future holds.

“Whenever companies, countries, face crises, it forces new kinds of thinking and behaviors,” he said. “There are tons and tons of costs that can be wrung out of every system.

“Technology is still untapped in it ability to streamline everything from government, to business,” he said.

That was certainly the case in 1989, when the company was founded with $3 million by Edward Iacobucci, the former leader of the IBM team that had created the personal computer in Boca Raton.

Iacobucci had pitched his idea to IBM, which was not interested, and turned down an offer from Microsoft to be the chief technology officer for its networking group, in order to start Citrix. He left his company in 2000, and Templeton, by then the company’s president, managed to survive the transition and eventually added the title of CEO.

As Templeton looks forward, he thinks the next generation, the generation of his three adult children, will have different values. (His children are following him into the technology world, to some extent, with one son working in information technology with JP Morgan in London, his middle child working for shutterfly.com and his youngest working on a second degree in animation.)

“This is the first generation that really has less than their parents had,” said Templeton, referring to economic resources. “But I don’t think this generation is upset about it. A lot of them have watched their parents, whether it’s both parents or not, working, or (dealing with) big mortgage and credit cards. They are more interested in quality of life and using tech to enhance life.”

And for his generation, the baby boomers nearing what they thought were retirement years?

“Regardless of government’s decisions regarding social welfare, social security, health care,” he said, “there won’t be a safety net that Americans imagined they were going to have. There will be more older part-timers in the work force. But this is not a doomsday thing.”

The world will be one where we are “competing for world resources more so that ever, crowded out by other economies that are growing and are at front end of growth cycle,” he said.

For Citrix, as Templeton sees it, that’s a tremendous amount of opportunity.

Shortly before talking with WorldCity, he had spent a week in the Middle East, at an event in Dubai. “Lot of customers coming to us,” he said. China is growing. “Plenty for us to do in India.”

At the WorldCity Global Connections event, he will talk about leadership and what he calls “followership,” as well as the responsibility of the corporation to society.