Citrix announced that it has completed the acquisition of XenSource, a provider of Enterprise virtualization solutions based on the Xen technology. The purchase price for the transaction was approximately $500 million payable in a combination of cash and Citrix common stock.
Citrix, a pioneer and long time player in the application delivery market, is now preparing to square off against its new virtualization competitors to try and once again dominate in a market at what they do best.
The company said that it expects the server and desktop virtualization markets to grow to nearly $5 billion over the next four years. And to go after that market, Citrix plans on being the only company to offer organizations an end-to-end application delivery infrastructure that leverages the method of application, desktop and server virtualization best suited for the dynamic delivery of applications to any user.
To create this comprehensive end-to-end virtualization portfolio, the company added two new product lines to its already rich application virtualization portfolio - through the acquisition of XenSource, Citrix has added Citrix XenServer (formerly known as XenSource XenEnterprise) and Citrix XenDesktop.
- Server Virtualization with Citrix XenServer. The new Citrix XenServer product line is an enterprise-class platform for managing server virtualization in the datacenter as a flexible aggregated pool of computing and storage resources. Based on the high-performance Xen virtualization engine, Citrix XenServer combines comprehensive server virtualization capabilities with unparalleled scalability, performance and ease-of-use. The new product line ranges from Citrix XenServer Express Edition, an easy-to-use single-server solution available for free download, to the more comprehensive Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition.
- Application Virtualization with Citrix Presentation Server. With more than 70 million users and 99 percent of the global Fortune 500 as customers, Citrix Presentation Server is the industry's de facto standard for delivering Windows applications with the best performance, security and cost savings. Presentation Server stores all Windows applications in a single central store in the datacenter, then delivers them to end users on-demand via innovative application virtualization technology. Server-side app virtualization stores applications on the server and virtualizes the presentation layer to end users, while client-side app virtualization streams applications to the desktop and runs them in a protected virtualization environment at the end point.
- Desktop Virtualization with Citrix XenDesktop. Citrix XenDesktop, scheduled to ship in the first half of next year, is a new product line designed to overcome the challenges of cost, complexity and user experience that have prevented virtual desktops from becoming a mainstream enterprise reality in the past. Citrix XenDesktop will be the industry's first comprehensive, fully integrated desktop delivery system, moving beyond the limitations of existing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) point solutions to ensure the simple, secure, fast delivery of Windows desktops to any office worker over any network. Citrix XenDesktop will combine a powerful desktop delivery controller (based on Citrix Desktop Server with native ICA protocol support), Xen virtualization infrastructure for hosting any number of virtual desktops in the datacenter, and virtual desktop provisioning to stream a single desktop image on-demand to multiple virtual machines in the datacenter (based on Citrix Provisioning Server).
A common question many people have asked is will the Citrix XenDesktop solution support other platforms, or is it strictly tied to Xen technology? And the answer from Citrix was that it will support other products such as Microsoft Viridian and VMware ESX Server.
Jumping into the server and desktop virtualization market with the XenSource acquisition puts Citrix right in the middle of a market currently dominated by VMware. But with their end-to-end battlecry, great channel partner relationships and a strong and loyal customer base, this could prove to be a virtualization turning point where we no longer simply talk about a single virtualization giant in the room.