citrix

Video: Interview with Frank Kohler, Virtualization Project Manager at Suse – Novell

February 24, 2008 by Toon Vanagt Leave a Comment

The interview below is part of our Virtualization Video Series, a recurring theme we want to implement on Virtualization.com featuring interviews with key players from the industry, event reports, etc.

This interview was recorded at the Profoss 2008 event on Virtualisation and features Frank Kohler, Virtualization Project Manager at Suse (Novell) being interviewed by Toon Vanagt on what he saw his clients do with virtualization technology and how you can avoid making those mistakes. Shortly after the interview, Frank was hired by XenSource (Citrix).

VMWare’s Mike DiPetrillo Openly Critical About Citrix – Xensource

February 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

If you thought the leaked internal VMWare memo criticizing the partnership between Microsoft and Citrix was bad, get a load of this: Mike DiPetrillo, Specialist System Engineer of Industry Research and Competitive Analysis at VMWare (VMW) and one of VMWare’s bloggers, posted a rather critical blog post on his personal space yesterday attacking Citrix’ acquisition of Xensource.

Other than calling Xensource a ‘good little company’, DiPetrillo says he’s still trying to figure out why Citrix paid $ 500 million for it in the first place.

“In Q3 XenSource announced 1,000 customers. On the call they said they added another 400 customers. Good growth! That puts the total at 1,400 customers. Then came the partner count – 1,817 partners certified to sell XenSource. Hmmm. So now we have 1,817 partners trying to get business from the 1,400 customers that total $2 million in revenue (that’s $1,100 in revenue per partner). Good days to be a Citrix partner.”

He goes on to say:

“OK. So the strategy is go and spend $500 million on a company that’s losing money, switch all of your current successful products and branding over to the losing company, and then exit the market when your larger partner moves into the market. Is this the end of Citrix then? Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 closes the gap pretty nicely. Virtual Desktops are also taking large chunks of market share. Time will tell where Citrix ends up.”

In the end, it’s fair critiscm and DiPetrillo does raise some good points, but coming from a VMWare employee (although published on his personal blog), the article is bound to make some people frown.

[Via Channel Marker]

Technorati Tags: virtualization, virtualisation, xensource, citrix, vmware, competition, criticism, Mike DiPetrillo

Company Index: VMWare

Internal Memo From VMWare Staff Criticizes Microsoft And Questions Its Partnership With Citrix

January 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

When Microsoft issued a long press release last week on its ‘Vision and Strategy to Accelerate Virtualization Adoption ‘, the internal sales channel at VMWare apparently got a memo downplaying MSFT’s announcements and instructing their commercial team to further question the Microsoft-Citrix partnership and its ability to survive Redmond’s plans with virtualization in front of their clients.

Here are some of the quotes a blogger reposted from an obtained copy of the memo (emphasis ours)

…Microsoft announced a hodge-podge of items related to virtualization in a desperate attempt to make it look like it had a new, coherent vision and strategy for virtualization…

…MSFT includes many recycled items in the announcement to make it look substantive. In actuality, they are just rehashes of old items. Microsoft is not delivering anything new, substituting marketing in place of real substance…

…The new items are a collection of loosely connected pieces thrown together to look like a coherent virtualization plan. Microsoft is still talking vision…

…Microsoft’s announcement introduces new conflicts into the Microsoft-Citrix business partnership and begs the question “When will Microsoft dump Citrix and take all of the business for itself?” Is this just a partnership of convenience for Microsoft until it ships its own product?…

…Tell your prospects that are considering Citrix, that MSFT will soon cut Citrix out of the loop…and Citrix is allowing it to happen…

…New Conflict #1: Microsoft System Center or Citrix XenServer for Management…This declaration hits at the heart of Citrix’s stated business model for virtualization – to generate revenue from the management of Windows VMs with Citrix XenCenter. System Center and XenCenter are clearly competitors…

…New Conflict #2: Calista acquisition creates more direct competition with Citrix SpeedScreen (ICA)..This acquisition strikes at Citrix’s core business since ICA is Citrix’s key differentiator and competes with RDP…

Microsoft and Citrix are longtime virtualization partners, but VMware is using Microsoft’s own advances in the market to argue that the two companies are also becoming bigger competitors with each other — despite their recently announced plan to develop interoperability between Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008. As Microsoft prepares to launch Windows Server 2008 — featuring the Hyper-V hypervisor — next month, the battle for VMware’s server virtualization market share lead should grow even more intense. Which makes it all more interesting for us, of course 🙂

Microsoft Betting Big on Virtualization; Acquires Calista Technologies. Citrix Up Next?

January 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Microsoft plans to announce today what it calls a companywide strategy to accelerate broad adoption of virtualization by its customers. As part of the its new approach, the Redmond-based software giant unveiled a suite of services aimed at reducing the number of servers businesses need to use, separating applications from operating systems, reducing costs and lowering carbon emissions.

Microsoft announced that it competed acquisition of Calista Technologies , a California-based startup that makes computer graphics for virtualized computers, and an expanded partnership with Citrix Systems, a VMware competitor based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Microsoft and Citrix will jointly market services that virtualize computers, operating systems and applications.

Microsoft wouldn’t disclose how much it paid for Calista, but Roger Kay, President of technology research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates, speculates that the price tag was likely south of $100 million. He also says Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Citrix. “Citrix, on its own, has a small market share,” Kay says. “VMware was cleaning its clock.” A Microsoft-Citrix combination could present formidable competition to VMware, he suggests. Buying Citrix, however, would be a significant deal: The company has a market cap of $6.4 billion.

[Source: Forbes ]

Patch Management Coming to a Citrix XenServer Near You

January 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Roger Klorese , Product Marketing Manager for Citrix XenServer , wrote a blog post revealing a major upcoming new feature in XenServer: pool-wide Patch Management.

“XenServer has had a relatively small number of patches, and in the case of security advisories, we’ve been consistently able to announce the fix for an issue very quickly, or in one case, even before the vulnerability was publicized.

But it’s true that virtual platforms can add complexity to patch management. While other Citrix technologies — Provisioning Server, for instance — can reduce the impact of patching significantly, the maintenance of the virtualization server platform itself is an major concern.

We don’t talk about future features very often, but here’s one area of the next release of Citrix XenServer — which is in closed beta with Citrix employees and partners now — that is worth crowing about.”

In conjunction with a wizard in XenCenter, there will be a possibility for you to:

* Check the Citrix XenServer website for updates
* Download any pending updates to your XenCenter system
* Choose which servers in your managed pools you wish to apply the patches to
* Put each server in maintenance mode (with their VMs kept online on another server via XenMotion)
* Apply the patches
* Bring the server back online and move VMs back to it automatically

No word on timing for the public beta.

Hat tip to Tarry Singh .