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Citrix Announces Agreement to Acquire XenSource
An anonymous reader writes "'Citrix has signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenSource a leader in enterprise-grade virtual infrastructure solutions. The acquisition moves Citrix into adjacent and fast growing datacenter and desktop virtualization markets.'
For nearly $500 million, including about $100 million of unvested options, Citrix would be purchasing VMWare's closest competitor in the server virtualization market, with XenEnterprise v4 offering technology similar to VMWare's flagship product — and arguably overtake them as a combined solution, as VMWare offers little in the realm of application and desktop virtualization. Though subject to the customary closing conditions, both boards of directors have approved the transaction, and the deal is expected to close in Q4 of 2007."
Xen is, of course, not VMWare's "closest competitor". Microsoft has over 25% of the market with their Virtual Server product. After that, Virtuozzo has the next largest deployment.
C//
VMware offers little in the realm of... desktop virtualization
Actually, no, not really. VMware has been doing quite a lot with VDI for a couple of years now. Really, they've pioneered it. It's Citrix that was trying to adapt and catch up in this field, as it threatened their traditional market. The purchase of XenSource goes a long way to help them compete in a market that VMware has been dominating.
In fact, I would go as far as saying that this purchase is primarily about Citrix keeping up with VMware in VDI.
Microsoft's VS is the old Connectix stuff. It's ok, and changes when a new hypervisor becomes part of Windows Server 2008. They tend to focus on servers, because their heads are up in their behinds about using mulitple desktop OSes-- anything else but theirs.
Virtuozzo isn't a server VM, it's an app VM.
VMWare and Xen are a bit different. VMWare has lots of depth and maturity. Xen has nearly similar compatibility but has fewer API sets to work with it. Xen's app hosting capabililities are more astute and highly competitive with Microsoft's SoftGrid and Citrix's remote apps. That's why Citrix bought them.
Virtuozzo has roots in site hosting, and it's maturity with Apache also extends to OpenVZ.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I'm not so sure about Virtuozzo; its mgmt components are ok.
Microsoft's VS seems to give a comfort level to homogeneous Microsoft 'houses'. Yet we've also seen it run Fedora seamlessly....although you can't get reasonable instrumentation without going to other stuff.
VMWare is nice, sexy, red, lipstick, and costs a fortune.
Yet Xen, while far better than early releases (ugly), seems to peak many interests in our web racks... for cost. Slick, it is not. But Citrix specializes in 'slick' and so we expect there to be interesting changes.
Unless you don't use Windows at all (and I'm not saying anyone does), the Microsoft VS will migrate onto Xen soon, too. Who'll win the race? Performance, price, reliability, in reverse order.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Xen has a lot of potential. The basic virtualization capabilities are on par with VMWare or anybody else.
What Xen _really_ blows at is usability / manageability. Setting up Xen is a pain in the ass, especially if you're on something other than 32bit x86. Figuring out obscure command line options and text config file syntax won't take them very far.
XenSource has a closed source, functionally limited GUI management tool in their free (as in beer) XenExpress. It makes managing Xen VMs more realistic, but the limitations are too severe (maximum of 4 VMs, missing some features).
If they want to compete with VMWare, and fend off KVM, they'll need a lot more traction. They only way they'll get it is to start building the user-base.
They need to open source their management tools, and make Xen as easy to use as VMWare. Maybe they need to hold back a few enterprise-grade features, so that they can still sell product at the high end. But, the common linux users, and low-end business users could still be enticed away from VMWare, to a more open solution, if it was available. If they continue their half-open approach, they even compete with themselves, in Xen on Ubuntu/Suse/RedHat.
If they don't open up, VMWare continues to dominate. Microsoft's upcoming hypervisor expands to the strong number 2 option, and other wildcards might crop up.. KVM with a good mgmnt too.