Citrix makes virtualisation platform free
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XenServer giveaway grabs headlines on the eve of VMware’s European expo
Application infrastructure vendor Citrix has chosen the day before VMware’s major European conference to announce that it will offer the next version of its XenServer virtualisation software for free.
XenServer, which Citrix acquired when it bought XenSource in 2007, includes a hypervisor but also offers additional virtual machine management capabilities not previously available in free products.
These include live motion (moving virtual machines across hardware platforms without interruption), managing virtual deployments with multiple nodes and resource sharing across multiple servers.
"This move is all about accelerating the adoption of virtualisation by tearing down the barriers of cost and complexity that have been in place for far too long," said Simon Crosby, CTO of Citrix’s virtualisation management division in a statement. "The faster we can help customers virtualise the millions of servers that remain unvirtualised today, the sooner they can start adding significant value on top, transforming static data centres into dynamic delivery centres where every application, desktop and server workload is delivered as an on-demand service."
The timing of the announcement is clearly an attempt by Citrix to make its presence felt before the virtualisation industry descends on Cannes for market leader VMware’s European expo tomorrow.
Citrix also announced the forthcoming availability of Essentials for Hyper-V, a version of its virtualisation management software bundle for use with Microsoft’s hypervisor. Together with the free availability of XenServer, this release makes the symbiotic partnership of Citrix and Microsoft a more viable alternative to VMware by offering customers greater choice.
All eyes on VMware, then, to see how it plans to step up the competition. Check www.information-age.com over the next couple of days for updates from VMworld.
