Citrix 2014 Annual Report Download - page 23

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hire executives and key employees or the loss of any executives and key employees could have a significant impact on our
operations. Over the past six months, we have appointed three new executives to key leadership positions. This and further,
changes in our management team may be disruptive to our business, and any failure to successfully integrate key new hires or
promoted employees could adversely affect our business and results of operations. Competition for qualified personnel in our
industry is intense because of the limited number of people available with the necessary technical skills and understanding of
products in our industry. The loss of services of any key personnel, the inability to retain and attract qualified personnel in the
future or delays in hiring may harm our business and results of operations. Effective succession planning is also important to
our long-term success. Failure to ensure effective transfer of knowledge and smooth transitions involving key employees could
hinder our strategic planning and execution, which may likewise harm our business and results of operations.
Adverse changes in general global economic conditions could adversely affect our operating results.
As a globally operated company, we are subject to the risks arising from adverse changes in global economic and market
conditions. Continued economic uncertainty across all geographic locations may adversely affect sales of our products and
services and may result in longer sales cycles, slower adoption of technologies and increased price competition. Additionally, in
response to sustained economic uncertainty, many governmental organizations outside the U.S. that are current or prospective
customers for our products and services continue to make, significant spending cutbacks which may continue to reduce the
amount of government spending on IT and demand for our products and services from government organizations. Adverse
economic conditions also may negatively impact our ability to obtain payment for outstanding debts owed to us by our
customers or other parties with whom we do business.
Industry volatility may result in increased competition.
The industry has been volatile and there has been a trend toward industry consolidation in our markets for several years.
We expect this trend to continue as companies attempt to strengthen or hold their market positions in an evolving and volatile
industry and as companies are acquired or are unable to continue operations. For example, some of our competitors have made
acquisitions or entered into partnerships or other strategic relationships to offer a more comprehensive solution than they had
previously offered. Further, some companies are making plans or may be under pressure by stockholders to divest businesses
and such divestitures may result in stronger competition. Additionally, as IT companies attempt to strengthen or maintain their
market positions in the evolving delivery network, workspace services and mobility apps markets, these companies continue to
seek to deliver comprehensive IT solutions to end users and combine enterprise-level hardware and software solutions that may
compete with our virtualization, mobility and collaboration and data sharing solutions. These consolidators or potential
consolidators may have significantly greater financial, technical and other resources and brand loyalty than we do, and may be
better positioned to acquire and offer complementary products and services. The companies resulting from these possible
combinations may create more compelling product and service offerings and be able to offer greater pricing flexibility or sales
and marketing support for such offerings than we can. These heightened competitive pressures could result in a loss of
customers or a reduction in our revenues or revenue growth rates, all of which could adversely affect our business, results of
operations and financial condition.
Actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in our products and services or cyberattacks on our networks could have a
material adverse impact on our business and results of operations.
Use of our products and services may involve the transmission and/or storage of data, including in certain instances
customers' business and personally identifiable information. Thus, maintaining the security of products, computer networks and
data storage resources is important as security breaches could result in product or service vulnerabilities and loss of and/or
unauthorized access to confidential information. We devote significant resources to addressing security vulnerabilities in our
products and services through our efforts to engineer more secure products and services, enhance security and reliability
features in our products and services, deploy security updates to address security vulnerabilities and seeking to respond to
known security incidents in sufficient time to minimize any potential adverse impact. Despite our preventive efforts, in 2013,
we discovered that unauthorized parties had penetrated certain of our systems resulting in us taking certain remedial measures.
Generally speaking, unauthorized parties may attempt to misappropriate or compromise our confidential information or that of
third parties, create system disruptions, product or service vulnerabilities or cause shutdowns. These perpetrators of
cyberattacks also may be able to develop and deploy viruses, worms, malware and other malicious software programs that
directly or indirectly, for example, though a vendor or other third-party, attack our products and services, our networks or
otherwise exploit any security vulnerabilities of our products, services and networks. Because techniques used by these
perpetrators to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not recognized until long
after being launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative
measures. We can make no assurance that we will be able to detect, prevent, timely and adequately address, or mitigate the
negative effects of cyberattacks or other security breaches.