MS Explores Citrix Options After Hydra Rears Its Head

The software giant is in talks to fix the damage caused by the pre-announcement of its Hydra Web browser technologyc

Citrix is locked in meetings with senior executives at Microsoft?s headquarters, hammering out a cross-licensing deal to mend the rift between the partners.

Two weeks ago, Citrix share prices plunged nearly 60 per cent after MS pre-announced a homegrown technology, codenamed Hydra, similar to the software it licenses from Citrix for Internet Explorer.

But Pierre-Jean Charrier, European marketing manager at Citrix, said that although he could not talk about specific details, there were avenues both companies were exploring.

He said: ?We have a licence with Microsoft for our ICA technology in Internet Explorer 3 and 3.1. We?re negotiating about cross-licensing more of our technology to Microsoft.?

Charrier revealed that Citrix has also licensed its technology to Netscape, but its deal with MS was only for NT Server and for Internet Explorer 3.5x at present, not version 4, which MS said would be integrated with the next version of Windows, codenamed Memphis, and NT 5.

But there is room for negotiation on that too, said Charrier, indicating that the success of NT 5 could depend on MS licensing more Citrix technology. He said the company had a series of patents covering current and future platforms.

?Our technology goes much further than just Microsoft platforms,? he said. ?It allows a range of devices to be connected to a number of platforms.?