Citrix Systems is in talks to buy the collaborative work management platform Wrike for a reported $2 billion (approximately £1.5 billion) in what might become the company’s largest acquisition in its history.

The virtualisation company may close a deal with the owners of Wrike, Vista Equity Partners, as soon as this week, according to Bloomberg. This deal potentially adds another tool to Citrix’s arsenal as the firm aims to become a major player in the collaboration space.

Talks are reportedly ongoing with nothing finalised, according to those questioned by the publication, and discussions could yet collapse at any stage.

While Citrix already develops cloud-based products that allow employees to work remotely and keep in touch with their colleagues, integrating collaboration software such as that developed by Wrike would allow the company to go one step further.

Wrike develops workplace collaboration software that incorporates elements such as planning, workflow management and project management. The core platform is also supported by a host of integrations with technologies developed by the likes of Box, Salesforce, Microsoft, Google and Slack.

Of the firm’s more than 20,000 customers are several high-profile customers including Walmart and Nickelodeon in the US. Wrike’s competitors, meanwhile, include Trello and Slack Technologies, which were each recently purchased in major deals by Atlassian and Salesforce respectively.

Should the acquisition go through at the reported $2 billion figure, it’ll become the largest in the company’s history. The firm previously acquired the micro-app developer Sapho in November 2018 for $200 million (roughly £150 million). Prior to that, in February 2018, Citrix bought the web traffic management firm Cedexis for an undisclosed fee.

Citrix has been on a mission to define the “future of work” for several years, and integrating a collaboration platform into the firm’s core Workspace service would naturally fit into this strategy. The popularity of this kind of software has certainly surged during 2020, however, due to COVID-19 and its effect on encouraging remote working.

CloudPro approached Citrix for a comment on the reports, but the company didn’t respond at the time of publication.