"We have essentially taken Citrix from being a single product just three short years ago to having a dozen products plus today," Cristinziano said.

Cristinziano said Citrix complemented the NetScaler purchase with its acquisition of Orbital Data Corp. for $50 million in August. Orbital makes a technology for optimizing delivery over wide-area networks. Similarly, it purchased Reflectent Software Inc., which makes performance monitoring systems, for $16.7 million in May.

Joe Terrasi, the IT manager at Gordon Tech High School in Chicago, is using the Ardence technology in the Catholic school's computer labs. He said it allows students to tinker with the operating system, make registry changes and generally do things "that we would normally be terrified of them doing" and then see the result of those changes. With a reboot, the image returns to its original state.

Terrasi said it remains to be seen whether Citrix's acquisition is an advantage to its customers. If Citrix continues down the road set by acquiring Ardence and improves the technology, he said, it can be a great product.