CEO assessment
"On his watch the company and pocketed shed its GoTo product lines and pocketed a cool US$2bn, improved profitability and forged alliances that saw Cisco and Microsoft send customers its way in preference to their own wares."
Let's assess each of these points where Tatarinov supposedly deserves credit:
1. The GoTo spinoff was well under way before Tatarinov took the reins at Citrix, and he had nothing to do with it operationally or strategically during his tenure. Zero credit here.
2. "Improved profitability" - this is true, but how hard is firing a lot of people?
3. As for "forging alliances with Microsoft" - there's no real accomplishment here, and in fact the moves with Redmond have damaged Citrix's position in key IT markets. The "partnership" with Microsoft on XenMobile has confused everyone, and resulted in Citrix losing a leadership position in Enterprise Mobility market (see recent Gartner Magic Quadrant). If I were an Enterprise IT shop, I would think twice about a strategic investment in Citrix's software because you never know when they'll cede their position to Microsoft. Citrix deferred to Microsoft with application streaming, they did it with server virtualization, they did it with enterprise mobility, they did it with online meetings (GoTo spin)...next one to cede could be enterprise file sharing.
I agree with the ex-Citrite's point of view, that Tatarinov wanted to invest in innovation but the board put the shackles on him. So he decided to quit as he was being pushed out the door.
Even after the successful GoTo spin off, Citrix is still worth more in a sum-of-the-parts calculation than as a whole. Sell Netscaler to Cisco, Xenserver to Amazon, Xendesktop, Xenapp, and Cloudportal to Microsoft, and Sharefile/Podio/Rightsignature to Logmein.
-Another ex-Citrite