Market-leading Remote Support Solution Empowers Businesses to Improve Profitability and Provide a Superior Customer Experience

LAS VEGAS (October 10, 2005) – Today at its 8th annual business and technology conference, Citrix iForum(TM) Global 2005, Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in access infrastructure solutions, today announced Citrix® GoToAssist(TM) 7, the next generation of the industry-leading remote technical-support and professional-services solution that enables organizations to provide best-in-class support over the Internet, on demand and securely.

Citrix GoToAssist is revolutionizing how contact centers and outsourcers, consulting and IT professionals are instantly helping their customers, anytime, anywhere, while increasing profitability. With its advanced suite of new features, including a management dashboard, expanded integration services, best practices resources and enhanced collaboration and productivity tools, Citrix GoToAssist 7 transforms remote services and support into competitive advantage.

“When technical support issues strike, business as usual stops dead in its tracks,” said Bill Rose, founder and executive director of the SSPA organization, the largest and most influential industry trade group for technology service and support professionals. “Accessing the right expertise and quickly resolving the problem can be the stuff of costly nightmares–for the customer and the IT/Support service provider. With the release of Citrix GoToAssist, a new model for virtual on-site support is taking place on the desktop, across industry and around the world today.”

Delivering more than 7,500,000 remote sessions annually to more than 3,600 corporate customers, Citrix GoToAssist offers unprecedented value, security and capability. In seconds, a technical consultant can, with customer permission, run diagnostics on the customer’s desktop, download patches, collaborate and provide visual training or update files in real time. With this next-generation solution, businesses can efficiently view, diagnose and solve problems online, on demand.

IDC, a leading industry analyst and market research firm, underscores the value of Citrix GoToAssist. “Remote support solutions, such as Citrix GoToAssist, offer companies a way to enhance the quality of the customer experience while lowering costs,” said Matt Healey, senior research analyst, Software and Hardware Support Services, at IDC. “As software companies begin to differentiate themselves on services as well as software functionality, customer support becomes a more important activity.”

“A great access experience for service and support is a win-win for both the customer and the service provider,” said Brian Donahoo, vice president of product and client services at Citrix Online. “With Citrix GoToAssist 7, we worked closely with our corporate customers to build the most valuable, comprehensive and cost-effective solution that empowers them to gain a deeper, more essential view into their business of service and support.”

Citrix GoToAssist Brings Support Teams Closer to the Customer
With Citrix GoToAssist, a wide range of consulting, support and IT/Help desk organizations are reporting significant improvements in productivity, profitability and customer-satisfaction metrics. Consultants, system integrators and value-added resellers (VARs), deploy Citrix GoToAssist to shorten implementation times, extend geographic reach, enhance profitability and improve customer loyalty in today’s competitive environment. For example, RSM McGladrey, a leading national business consulting, accounting, and tax firm, boosts consultants’ productivity and effectiveness with Citrix GoToAssist while achieving higher client satisfaction. IT/Help desks, as exemplified by TechuNet, a non-profit help desk subsidiary of Help USA Inc., employ the solution to provide remote support to all of their end users in real time, regardless of location.

Software support organizations use Citrix GoToAssist to reduce call-resolution time and escalations and lower costs while enhancing service quality. Data Futures, a small business that provides software to the food-service industry for education markets, is delivering support with Citrix GoToAssist 7 to a number of its customers affected by the Katrina disaster. “The new capabilities in Citrix GoToAssist could not have come at a better time,” said Todd Meziere, support manager at Data Futures. “The ability to do multi-sessions in phone mode has helped us in what is normally our busiest time of year – now compounded with a number of our customers affected by the Katrina disaster.”

Kronos Incorporated, the most trusted name in workforce management, is pioneering a new way to deliver customer and technical support by integrating Citrix GoToAssist 7 with self-service technologies for a 360-degree view of its support operations. “With Citrix GoToAssist’s new dashboard feature, it’s even easier for managers to stay informed and take action in real-time to ensure that our performance meets or exceeds expectations at all times,” said Mark Ellis, director of the Emerging Technology Team at Kronos. “Citrix GoToAssist helps us respond with the best ways to provide expert service and support.”

New Citrix GoToAssist 7 Capabilities Include:
Manager’s Dashboard for monitoring incoming queries and activity of teams, sub-teams, and representatives
Expanded Team Management for segmenting teams into tiers or sub-teams to monitor customer satisfaction and track performance goals
Expanded Integration APIs including:
Monitor API – for providing technician status information to ACD systems
ChatLink API – for integrating chat with knowledge-base applications
Best Practices Resource Center for providing a valuable resource designed to help maximize return-on-investment in four easy steps
Combined Phone and Web Mode for managing both connection methods from one control panel, using a single GoToAssist login
Multi-Session Phone Mode for engaging in up to eight simultaneous Phone Mode sessions
Agent-to-Agent Session Transfer for seamlessly transferring a session directly to another specialist or team
Purpose-built for remote support, Citrix GoToAssist is adopted by small and midsized businesses and Fortune 500 companies that require a cost-effective, easy-to-use solution with strong security, such as companies that serve the financial services and healthcare industries.

Citrix GoToAssist provides companies with fast, secure, highly scalable and reliable connectivity to desktop applications, enabling businesses to engage in support sessions with all of their customers and employees, even those with connections as slow as 28.8Kbps. Redundant systems and 24/7 monitoring helps ensure that Citrix GoToAssist service is always available. No investment in hardware or software is required, eliminating costly deployment expenses and implementation time. The service incorporates strong security and data privacy with 128-bit, end-to-end Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) data encryption as standard protection for all sessions, and enables compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). To learn more about the award-winning Citrix GoToAssist, visit http://www.gotoassist.com/s/corp/pr or call (800) 549-8541 .

Source: Citrix Online