Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Citrix Announces Agreement to Acquire XenSource

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the two-great-tastes dept.

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."

2 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Xen not "closest competitor". by Courageous · · Score: 4, Informative


    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//

  2. Uhh... by TheRealFixer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.