In my previous post I wrote that I don't understand if Citrix will or won’t compete with Microsoft for server virtualization once Microsoft’s Hyper-V is released. A few readers who apparently work for Citrix responded in comments to my post stating that Citrix and Microsoft will not compete because the two companies are collaborating on virtualization. I am indeed aware of this collaboration but I think that "collaboration" should not be confused with "no competition".
Consider the following scenario: a few months from now a large organization decides to virtualize its servers and to standardize on a single vendor. If that organization approaches VMware and asks them which product it should use obviously their answer will be "ESX". Likewise if that organization approaches Microsoft I'm sure their answer will be "Hyper-V". But what will Citrix's answer be? If they answer "XenServer" then by definition they are also competing with Microsoft. If they answer anything else then they are indeed not competing, but this means that they are also not selling XenServer, and then why did they buy XenSource in the first place?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
Hi Dan,
Would these 2 articles answer your question?:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206904764
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=DMNAFTGFCTMKAQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=206904764&pgno=2&queryText=
Satisfied Citrix user.
Oh sorry, you talk about XenServer and not XenApps here, sorry no answer there :)
Anon,
Thanks for the links. I definitely agree that XenApp and Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect do not compete with 2008 TS. Indeed, I've blogged about this in the past. Our PowerTerm WebConnect does compete with XenApp, and I recommend that you check it out. Even satisfied customers should check out the alternatives once in a while :)
But the story is different regarding XenServer. Server virtualization is a market Ericom does not compete in but Microsoft soon will. I simply don't understand how Microsoft and Citrix can be in the same market segment (server virtualization) with different products without competing with each other.
Thanks Dan for response.
But why does it bother you so much? Who cares if Citrix will or will not compete with Microsoft in virtualization space?
In my opinion there is market share for all companies, some customers will choose MS, some Citrix, some VmWare.
I'm not bothered by this, rather I'm curios. Citrix is Ericom's largest competitor and Microsoft is our largest partner so their relationship is of obvious interest to us. Also, while we are not involved in server virtualization we are involved in desktop virtualization, and the two are related. I was therefore glad when Citrix employee Alicia Rey posted a blog entry purporting to answer this question. Unfortunately instead of an answer all I got was a lot of Marketing Speak. Go ahead and read that post and then tell if you can figure out the answer.
Why did you take down the other posts that were here?
I have only removed one single comment in the entire existence of this blog, and it was on a different post. I think you are simply looking at the wrong post.
Post a Comment