Stranded Travelers Conduct ‘Business as Usual’ thanks to Online Collaboration Technologies

With a second cloud of ash from the Iceland volcano heading towards Europe, major disruption to air travel continues to paralyze hundreds of airports and leave millions of passengers stranded around the world, including an estimated 40,000 Americans in Britain alone. As a result, there has been a dramatic increase in the adoption of online collaboration technologies by business users who need such solutions to help them stay operational during this time.

Whether they need remote access to their PC or a way to meet with colleagues or clients when face-to-face is currently not possible, such solutions help ensure it’s ‘business as usual’ for workers wherever they are in the world.

As a result of the current worldwide travel disruption, Citrix Online has seen a dramatic increase in demand for its online web conferencing solutions that enable individuals to easily take part in virtual meetings regardless of where they are located. Usage of GoToMeeting has doubled in Europe compared to the previous week since the disruption began.

"Online collaboration tools are already a huge growth area as more and more people realize that business can often be done just as effectively – if not more so – online instead of in person,” says Brett Caine, general manager of Citrix Online. "In extreme circumstances such as the volcanic ash disruption, these tools allow people to be fully operational no matter where they are. But it’s also a reminder that businesses need to be prepared with the tools to be productive at a moment’s notice as it’s impossible to predict when the next disruption will occur.”

According to the U.S. Travel Association, the ash clouds produced by the eruption cost the U.S. economy approximately $130 million per day. This highlights the importance to businesses of all sizes in enabling employees to have immediate, secure access to solutions that are both readily available, affordable and simple to use – even if they do not have a formal continuity plan in place.

About Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the leading provider of virtualisation, networking and software as a service technologies for more than 230,000 organisations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world’s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2009 was $1.6 billion.

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