Steve was invited to tell Citrix’s story and talk about the reason behind choosing Raleigh’s Warehouse District for Citrix ShareFile’s new 130,000-square-foot office space. And what a story it was!

Steve explained that beginning with ShareFile’s acquisition by Citrix in October 2011, there were conversations about the need for a new, larger office space to house a planned workforce expansion.

He spoke  about the due diligence involved in a selection like this and discussed the 12 qualifying factors that the Citrix team looked at in each county, city, submarket and individual site under consideration.

When he started examining all the hypotheticals of a Downtown Raleigh warehouse office space (versus a more conventional space) he says he felt, “like a kid in a candy store.”

The Dillon Supply warehouse in Downtown Raleigh was selected because of what Nicholson called “The Raleigh Distinction”— great performance in all twelve factors and excellent performance in a few key areas:

-The ability to attract and retain great talent

-High quality of life for residents

-Great transportation options through the city and region

-Supportive and enthusiastic local government-Strong telecom and utilities at fair prices

-A strong value-to-cost ratio

-Environmental and social awareness

Nicholson also spoke about the importance of a viable, scalable site and building choice as important factors which ultimately led to the pursuit of LEED certification for the West Street warehouse site, citing “doing right, within reason” as a driving motivator.

Those who attended also had the opportunity to hear the American Planning Association’s outgoing president, Mitchell Silver (who just so happens to also be the chief planning and development officer for the City of Raleigh!) speak about the importance of a strong and healthy downtown, specifically in terms of the ROI it can give investors. Mitchell was actually in Chicago at the 2013 APA Convention and wired in via GoToMeeting!

Brian Reece, managing partner of KARNES Research and a member of Downtown Raleigh Living Advocates, gave an overview of occupancy trends in Downtown Raleigh housing developments. David Diaz, president and CEO of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance moderated a fantastic panel discussion and presented the 2013 State of Downtown publication with its findings.

Citrix Receiver allows users to access their published applications from any number of devices, including their tablets, phones or PC. With ShareFile now playing a part, your documents are available along with all of your applications. Need to edit that PowerPoint presentation before you get in? Receiver with ShareFile integration will allow you to open up Microsoft PowerPoint on your tablet and then open any PowerPoint files you may have saved within your ShareFile account! With a quick edit and save, the presentation is saved back into your ShareFile account and ready to be opened in the conference room PC where you are giving your presentation.

With Citrix’s acquisition of the collaboration application Podio, ShareFile brings further value into the evolving Citrix world. Now if you are working with your team on a project, you can easily store and share the necessary files that you may all need access to, right in your team’s Podio workspace. Files are still stored using ShareFile’s secure encryption methods with all the functionality users are used to and can be easily worked on by your team.

ShareFile’s constantly expanding integration into current popular applications is a key factor in the Citrix vision. It will be exciting to see where the vision leads to next.

Learn more about the design of the new space and hear from Mark Templeton (Citrix CEO) and Jesse Lipson (VP & GM, Data Sharing) in this news clip, aired on ABC’s 6pm news.

As you may know, this award recognizes the fastest-growing private companies. After nearly six years of operating profitably as a privately-held company with no outside funding, we recently completed a transaction to be acquired by Citrix Systems. We are looking forward to some exciting integrations with Citrix in the coming months.

TBJ asked Jesse Lipson (ShareFile CEO- now VP and GM of Data Sharing at Citrix) what’s been fueling our growth over the past few years and he replied back with a simple answer- Our company culture and our customer-centric focus. Our growth strategy flows from focusing on our customers’ needs and providing a valuable service based on data-driven decisions.

Make sure to check out the special section in the November 18th issue of the Triangle Business Journal, which will feature a profile of Jesse Lipson.

Over the past several years, I’ve been fortunate enough to speak with many of our customers. For all of the customers with whom I haven’t been able to speak personally, I’ve seen your feedback and suggestions through support tickets (I still read every support ticket and suggestion submitted to us). Throughout our company history, we have been entirely funded by our customers (we’ve never raised outside money) and most of our new features have come from customer suggestions.

Because of the close partnership that we’ve had with our customers, I wanted you to know that ShareFile has been acquired by Citrix Systems. Citrix is a fantastic company that makes many products you may already use, including GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, XenDesktop, and XenApp. Even more importantly, it is a company that is very closely aligned with ShareFile in terms of vision and values.

Now that ShareFile is part of Citrix, we will be able to tap into even more resources that will allow us to continue providing the easiest to use, most professional business file sharing service on the market, with customer care that is unmatched by our competitors.

You may be wondering how this acquisition will impact you as a customer. The answer is that you can expect the same great software and services that you’ve come to expect from ShareFile. 100% of the nearly 100 employees from ShareFile are staying with the company, and our leadership team is committed to continuing to serve our customers for years to come. Moving forward, we’ll have even more resources to continue to improve our product and service and to take ShareFile to the next level.

This is a very exciting time for all of us at ShareFile and we thank you, our customers, for helping us get here.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our Account Services or Support teams.

Sincerely,

Jesse Lipson
CEO, ShareFile
VP, GM of Data Sharing, Citrix

From Personal Computers to Personal Clouds

In the PC Era, data was typically stored on a single personal computer, accessed from a physical office, and shared via flash drives or email. As the industry transitions to the Cloud Era, an increasingly mobile workforce is demanding easy access to data that is untethered from offices and devices, and easy to share and collaborate securely with others. These trends are giving rise to the concept of a “personal cloud” – the aggregation of apps, data, preferences and friends that are unique to each individual employee, and move seamlessly across any device or location.

Based on industry estimates, Citrix expects the personal cloud market to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity by 2015, fueled by trends such as cloud computing, faster bandwidth, email limitations and the consumerization of IT. Citrix is leading the charge to empower these users, delivering “follow-me-desktops” and “follow-me-apps” to more than 100 million people every day, across a wide variety of business and consumer devices. With the acquisition of ShareFile, Citrix is adding “follow-me-data” capabilities to its portfolio, allowing business users to access their documents and files from anywhere, share them across multiple devices and collaborate easily with colleagues.

Citrix Cloud Data Strategy

The acquisition of ShareFile brings Citrix a powerful new technology platform, and a talented team with deep experience in data services and cloud computing. ShareFile CEO, Jesse Lipson, will become Vice President and General Manager of the newly-formed Data Sharing product group at Citrix. This group will be responsible for the ShareFile product line, as well as enabling the Citrix “follow-me-data” strategy. Taking a platform approach to data will enable Citrix to:

-Make common data services like search, share, sync, secure, authenticate, open and preview available to a wide range of applications, services and use cases through a set of open APIs.

-Extend secure data sharing services to new and existing apps stored in public and private clouds and accessed from millions of different business and consumer devices.

-Connect data seamlessly into the way people collaborate today, ensuring that the right documents and files are always accessible when needed, and always up to date.

Citrix Synergy Barcelona

Citrix will reveal more of its plans for ShareFile and the follow-me-data platform strategy at Citrix Synergy™ Barcelona, October 26-28.

Quotes

Mark Templeton, President and CEO, Citrix Systems, Inc.

“This is a highly strategic acquisition that enables Citrix to deliver all three of the critical components for the personal cloud – collaboration, apps and data – with amazing accessibility and productivity on any device. Our follow-me-data strategy means data will be shared (1) across people, (2) across apps, and (3) across devices. As customers and partners build on this platform, they will be able to easily add follow-me-data services to their software, leverage the data that other apps store there, and instantly inherit all the management, mobility and scalability that’s in the ShareFile infrastructure.”

Jesse Lipson, CEO, ShareFile

“Joining the Citrix team will provide a great home to the thousands of ShareFile corporate customers, serving millions of users worldwide. The combination of Citrix and ShareFile will also help spur incredible new innovation around the role of data in the new Cloud Era workplace.”