Citrix Announces Agreement to Acquire XenSource 86
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."
Uhh... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:So... What does this mean for OSS? (Score:2, Interesting)
If by propaganda you mean using the products... (Score:3, Interesting)
We mostly use VMware ESX, which is really directed to IT departments. All of the tools assume central control. They work extremely well and reliably, as long as you're willing to stick with the centrally managed model. We've been using VMware Server on our development workstations to develop and test applications with specific images.
I've been using Amazon EC2, which is a Xen-based value-adding product, for external software testing and random one-off hosting. I've installed Xen with CentOS 5 and FC6/7 on development servers and workstations, to try it out. The open source Xen tools are extremely rudimentary. The XenSource "enterprise" tools are basically copies of the VMware model, and mimic the centrally managed thing without doing it quite as well. However, the Xen API is very malleable towards a non-centrally-management tool model. By that I mean that you could very easily (and I'm doing just that on my copious free time) build a self-service server station for a IT department, to provide quick service to those internal customers who just need some commodity server space, right now, and for the right price.
Virtuozzo's story is basically over. With absolutely everybody in the underdog space choosing Xen, it's not likely they'll get much new business outside their narrow niche. It doesn't matter how neat your product is, if the product next door is completely acceptable, open to newcomers, free, and adopted by all of your other suppliers.
Re:If by propaganda you mean using the products... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.