Edward Iacobucci

Edward E. Iacobucci (September 26, 1953 – June 21, 2013) was an American businessman who co–founded Citrix Systems.

Biography

Iacobucci was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Dr. Guillermo and Costantina Iacobucci. His father, a biochemist, moved his family to the U.S. in 1960 to work for E.R. Squibb & Sons and then Coca-Cola. Roberto Goizueta, then Chairman of Coca-Cola, became a close friend of the family and Ed's godfather. Both men, his father and Goizueta, strongly influenced Iacobucci's business ethos.

Ed graduated from Georgia Tech Institute with a B.S. in systems engineering.

A 30-year veteran of the technology industry, Iacobucci began his career at IBM in 1979 where he played a key role in Big Blue's entry into the commercial software and personal computer business. While at IBM Iacobucci held architecture and design leadership responsibilities for IBM DOS and OS/2 and led the joint IBM-Microsoft design team that launched the modern era of multi-tasking personal computer operating systems.

In 1989, Iacobucci left IBM to co-found Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) and implement his vision of server-based computing. He led the company as chairman and chief technology officer through all of its market and product development phases. Under his leadership, Citrix grew rapidly and was named to both the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 in record time. In 1997, Iacobucci forged an unprecedented, five-year joint development agreement with Microsoft to include Citrix multi-user capabilities within Microsoft Windows NT Server. He served as Citrix chairman through 2000, when he retired to pursue his vision of Software-as-a-Service – flying aircraft.

In 2002, Iacobucci co-founded as served as president and CEO DayJet Corporation, an on-demand airline service that sold individual seats via a time sensitive pricing scale and utilized the Eclipse 500 very light jet, with the mission of bringing affordable, accessible Per-Seat, On-Demand jet travel to more people and more communities. He and his engineering team built a breakthrough computer system for solving highly-complex optimization problems for the world's first true on-demand air service. The young company forged a five-year strategic agreement with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to pioneer the Next Generation of Air Transportation technologies. But after a successful launch in 2007, DayJet was forced to cease operations in 2008 when it was no longer able to secure its planned growth capital.

Between 2002 and 2007 he was a member of the SCO Group's Board of Directors.

His most recent venture was VirtualWorks Group, a company he co-founded in 2009 to tackle data sprawl – an outgrowth of the information age that he helped to create. In 2011 he founded VirtualWorks which helps manage data across many platforms. Iacobucci served as President and CEO until May 20, 2013 when he stepped down for health reasons.

In 1998, he was recognized as the top entrepreneur in the world with the prestigious CNN, USA Today, and Ernst & Young "International Entrepreneur of the Year" award. In 2005, Newsweek included him in its list of "10 Big Thinkers for Big Business", and in in 2007 Iacobucci was named to Business 2.0 magazine's list of the "50 Who Matter Now".

Iacobucci sat on the Engineering advisory board for Georgia Institute of Technology. He served as a technology judge at the state and national level for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, and he was active in Junior Achievement at the local, state and national levels. His hobbies include boating, photography and horse breeding.

He is survived by his wife, Nancy Lee (Iacobucci); his three children, Marianna (Eden), William (Iacobucci), and Michelle (Iacobucci); mother, Costantina (Iacobucci); brother, Billy (Iacobucci); and three grandchildren, Sophia, Haven and Estelle.