Citrix Startup Accelerator, the company’s corporate incubator focused on providing seed investments to start-ups from around the world, has named the five finalists of its Startup.Synergy Challenge. These finalists will present the case for their product live to a panel of judges the afternoon of May 9 during the Startup.Synergy track at Citrix Synergy, the conference where mobile workstyles and cloud services meet. An esteemed panel of judges from Citrix and the Silicon Valley venture capital community will select the winner of the $100,000 investment from Citrix, and inclusion in the Startup Accelerator 2012 class. The finalists chosen to compete include:

• AppEnsure - Application performance ensurance in dynamic virtualized and cloud computing environments
• BuildAR - Commoditizing access to augmented reality for today, and for tomorrow’s new enterprise apps
• CumuLogic - Enabling Java platform-as-a-service in public, private and hybrid IaaS clouds
• Hey Maya - Virtual personal assistants for access to enterprise apps from mobile
• ScriptRock - A new look at configuration management – store, share and test your system configurations

The winner will be selected by an experienced panel of judges, including:

• Ramu Arunachalam - Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
• Paul Weinstein - founding General Partner, Azure Capital
• Frank Artale - General Partner, Ignition Capital
• Carl Showalte - General Partner, Opus Capital
• Jonathan Siegel - Principal, Right Ventures
• Jason Calacanis - CEO, Mahalo.com
• Matt Marshall - Founder and Editor-in-Chief, VentureBeat
• Martin Duursma - VP and GM, Citrix Labs
• Kumar Goswami - VP of Products, VDI-in-a-Box, Citrix
• Jesse Lipson - VP and GM, Data Sharing, Citrix
• Chris Fleck - VP of Mobility Solutions, Citrix
• Andy Cohen - VP of Corporate Development, Citrix

The IT landscape is in a period of dramatic change, shifting expectations of IT and computing capabilities and providing an opportunity for entrepreneurs to contribute their ideas. As the exceptions of the PC Era – mobile users, personal devices, and wireless access – rapidly become the assumptions of the Cloud Era, Citrix recognizes that startups can help shape the future. With the Startup Accelerator program, Citrix continues to lead innovation by enabling entrepreneurs to benefit from the global Citrix presence, its large customer base and seasoned go-to-market strategies to help further their ideas.

Second Investment Successfully Exits Startup Accelerator

In tandem with naming a new entrant into the Startup Accelerator program, Citrix will also announce that Drumbi is the second investment company to successfully exit the Accelerator upon the close of its first A round of funding. This news comes on the heels of Nukona’s successful acquisition by Symantec in April 2012. Since launching the program in 2011, the program has announced investments in eleven innovative companies that are poised to change the face of cloud, mobile and virtualization technologies. The successful migration path forward of both Drumbi and Nukona is testament to the value of the Citrix contribution to leading innovation in the tech industry.

Startup.Synergy

At Startup.Synergy, fifteen startups will be featured including ten current portfolio companies and the five Startup.Synergy Challenge finalists. The sessions held during Startup.Synergy will focus on providing entrepreneurs with insight into the incredibly fluid IT landscape of the Cloud Era. It will provide an inside look at tomorrow’s multibillion tech companies, a framework to appreciate how quickly these companies are proliferating and showcase how the Citrix Startup Accelerator is building new bridges to this ecosystem. Registration is available online here.