Citrix has appointed Microsoft veteran Rakesh Narasimhan as group vice president and general manager.
He will drive strategy for the company’s desktop and application virtualization business with responsibility for products including Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp.
Narasimhan spent 15 years at Microsoft serving as general manager for several business lines in the Server and Tools division covering Microsoft Azure, SQLServer, Windows Server, Windows Client, virtualization, storage, data protection and security products.
Most recently, he served as president and CEO at InstallFree, a developer of application portability, virtualization and access solutions that delivered Microsoft Office as a subscription-based cloud service to any device. He worked at Oracle in senior roles in the areas of databases, transaction-processing systems and distributed systems.
Narasimhan will be based in the Citrix Silicon Valley headquarters.