Persistent buys Citrix, says working on larger deal pipeline

Persistent Systems has signed an agreement with Swiss company Citrix Systems and will acquire its CloudPlatform and CloudPortal Business Manager product lines for an undisclosed sum. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Anand Deshpande, Founder, MD and CEO of the company, says the products are powered by Apache CloudStack. The two are used by companies to build their own cloud platform, which helps them monetise and monitor infrastructure services, he adds.However, the company does not have any timeline for acquisitions and is working on a pipeline of larger deals, Deshpande says. These acquisitions are consistent with other products like Aepona and RGen Soutions from Intel, he adds.Below is the verbatim transcript of Anand Deshpande's interview with Ekta Batra & Anuj Singhal on CNBC-TV18.Anuj: What does the contract that you have signed with Citrix Systems International means and how is it going to help in terms of revenues?A: We are acquiring two product lines from Citrix which are broadly classified around what is known as the CloudStack product line. The CloudStack product lines are open source products that are sold through Apache Foundation under the Apache CloudStack product line and these products are used by companies to build their own private clouds or to help setup clouds that they want to have for public consumption, so the product actually helps you setup, build cloud platform and also helps you monetise and do whole set of things around monitoring and managing these kinds of cloud platforms. This company has been around for a while, that was acquired by Citrix. We have acquired the team and the support business that this one does. The software as such is licensed through public open source strategy that they have through Apache.Ekta: Can you give us more colour in terms of the size of the deal as well as what the revenue picture, EBITDA margins look like, whether it will be EPS accretive from day one?A: There are some restrictions about what I can share from Citrix at this moment but let me say the following, this is consistent with the other products that we have done in the past such as Aepona and Radia that we have done from Intel and HP respectively. So our strategy has been to go after products that have a future, focus on them and acquire them from companies for whom this is a small and not strategic in some sense. So we are able to take these products on and essentially extend and expand the life of those products and this is consistent with that. Most of these tend to be between USD 5 million and USD 20 million range products and this fits in nicely in that area and we will be able to share more details and specifically the financial numbers after the quarterly numbers are announced in another ten days from now. However, this has no impact on this quarter, the quarter that finished because this happened only yesterday. There is one month to 45 day plan to closing conditions have to be completed and after that is done that\\'s when it will start to have an impact on our revenue and cost equation. So hopefully by the middle of February to end of February we should start to see this in our numbers.Anuj: You had said in the past that you are open to bigger acquisitions. Have you worked on any targets or any timelines in terms of bigger acquisitions?A: I would not say that we have any specific timelines but we do have pipeline of some larger deals that we are working on and unfortunately lot of these deals take a long time to materialise, for example we have been talking on many of the deals that we have closed in the last two quarters for several years before they happen. So the lead time is large, so we have several in the pipeline and hopefully we should be able to announce them as soon as we complete them.