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I've spent the last day or so at Cannes meeting channel partners and customers who have been responding to the announcement that Citrix has declared XenServer virtual infrastructure to be absolutely free, and our additional annoucements of our powerful value-added virtualization management capabilities in Citrix Essentials for XenServer and partnership with Microsoft to offer Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V.
The response has been fantastic, and almost overwhelming. Across the board, customers, analysts and partners I have met have responded positively to the Citrix announcements. Every CIO I have met in the last couple of quarters has had their budget cut, and is faced with the difficult task of moving IT forward in challenging economic times. XenServer offers, free of charge, a complete virtual infrastructure package that delivers what every enterprise and every cloud needs to accelerate their goal towards a virtualized, automated, service-centric IT function that is agile and responsive to business needs.
The powerful response to our announcement both in person and via blogs and email shows how important our move has been. Customers who have been purchasing virtual infrastructure for resource pooling, live migration, optimal VM placement and who need built-in HA for management, powerful storage management, resource pooling, built-in DR and backup enablement, and with powerful AD-integrated, role based centralized managment for multiple resource pools will find in XenServer a complete free Enterprise Virtual Infrastructure solution. Citrix partners I've spoken to are excited because they think this accelerates their opportunities for value-added feature sales of Citrix Essentials for XenServer, as well as offering them a compelling value-added sale to the rapidly growing Microsoft Hyper-V footprint. Here are just a couple of the over 150 positive news responses I've seen:
"[XenServer's] performance is great, the software is quite easy to install, use and manage, and it provides nice features in terms of management and Storage management." - LeMagIT
"When Citrix releases such a rich enterprise package for free, what company can afford to skip a XenServer evaluation in the current economy?" - virtualization.info
"Here's the real VMware dig---it eliminates virtualization's high entry price in a tough economy" -HP SysCon
"The highlight of the Citrix announcement - is going to put a lot of competitive pressure on VMware, commented Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates." - eChannelLine
Today a couple of commentators and interviewers asked me whether our move was one of desperation - essentially questioning whether Citrix is commited to XenServer and the virtualization market. Of course we are. XenServer revenue grew over 800% last year! What we are doing is accelerating our opportunity and at the same time offering customers and partners a unique opportunity to change the game in how virtualization is delivered and used by customers. We are just shy of 6000 enterprise customers with XenServer, and whenever we compete head to head, we win. This move is designed to get our product into use by more customers, ensuring that our commercial opportunity (in terms of Support and Citrix Essentials for XenServer sales) is further accelerated by direct pull from the customer base. Xen is the engine powering the largest virtualization deployment in the world, Amazon Web Services. The future is bright for Xen and XenServer. Over 100,000 different organizations use XenServer today, and XenServer is used in some of the largest production deployments of virtualization. (The largest of which I am aware is just shy of 10,000 servers).
XenServer is the software foundation of the Citrix Delivery Center portfolio and the fact that we have chosen to accelerate the adoption dynamic for our core platform is nothing more than a clear signal of our commitment to Xen and XenServer. "Free Virtual Infrastructure" is much more than a "Free HypervisorIt's important to realize that Citrix is giving away a free virtual infrastructure platform and offering for-fee advanced virtualization management capabilities for those customers that choose to add on these capabilities. The advanced capabilities are those that customers will want for different production deployments of virtualization, for which we fully expect purchases of Citrix Essentials for XenServer, together with production Support. We fully aim to dramatically accelerate the growth of our business in virtualization, by addressing advanced needs for automation, including High Availability, Dynamic Workload Management (DRS), StorageLink dynamic storage automation, complete workflow based orchestration, dynamic provisioning of VMs, and complete virtual machine lifecycle management including virtual Lab and virtual Stage management. At the same time, users should compare the free XenServer with VMware's free ESXi base hypervisor gimmick that has no production level features whatsoever. We fully expect the free version of XenServer will satisfy the virtualization needs of the vast majority of organizations and remain committed to enhancing the value of the product over time.
Microsoft And Citrix Partnership
The response to our partnership with Microsoft in virtualization, with our offering of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V and Microsoft's commitment to support XenServer with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, has been equally powerful. The Microsoft field is charged up and ready to run with Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V, and does so confident in its long standing partnership with Citrix. Citrix has built a strong and sustainable business during its 20 year partnership with Microsoft, and our move enables us to offer customers a rich set of virtualization managment capabilities for both XenServer and Hyper-V. I must confess being dumbfounded by VMware CEO Paul Maritz's statement yesterday to the effect that users are no longer developing applications for Windows or Linux, but instead for VMware.- further proof that VMware continues to believe in the imminent "death of Windows.". Citrix enjoys a strong alliance with Microsoft for application, desktop, and server virtualization. We believe that many customers will adopt Hyper-V, and given our rich set of advanced management tools applicable to both XenServer and Hyper-V, it makes perfect sense to extend our partnership with Microsoft and capitalize on the Hyper-V market opportunity while we continue to move forward with Xen and XenServer. Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V respectively are designed to offer equivalent price/feature capabilities to both platforms, effectively doubling our market opportunity.
The Xen Hypervisor goes from Strength to Strength
While I'm sure my friends at VMware would like to see Xen go away, they are probably completely oblivious to the fact that the xen.org Xen Summit is under way at Oracle this week, with over 120 of our developers present, representing more than 30 key contributing organizations to the open source hypervisor. This is amazing given the down economy and pressure on travel budgets. Xen continues to go from strength to strength, and what's more amazing still is that one single code base offers the world's most scalable open reference hypervisor from clouds, to enterprise datacenters and to rich client desktop devices and PDAs. Can ESX match that? No, ESX is still a 32 bit x86 only hypervisor with narrow focus and highly limited capabilities. Customers tell me one of the reasons they are throwing out ESX is that it takes 6 months for VMware to offer supported drivers for new hardware that they purchase. What a waste. What a great example of a proprietary code base .failing to keep up with the pace of innovation. ESX has become a burdensome, bloated OS in its own right. Its requirement for patching and regular maintenance has ballooned over the years; over 150 patches have been issued for VI 3.5 in just over a year since its release. VMware also experienced a very high profile reliability issue with the recent Update 2 bug, which brought many of their customer environments to a halt. By comparison, XenServer 4.0 has been on the market for over 18 months and has required issuance of just 4 patches. Despite VMware's claims about cost-savings, they ignore the new, ongoing maintenance costs that are introduced with their solution.
The VMware FUD Accelerates
VMware has issued a FUD-focussed response to our announcement. I received it moments after they blasted it out to attendees at VMworld and to their channel, clearly rattled to the core by our announcements. VMware's responseis 100% inaccurate, and wholly unworthy of a tit-for-tat response. To my mind any vendor that adopts an approach of blatantly misrepresenting the facts, and actively misleading its partners, customers and the ecosystem in response to announcements by its competitors clearly signals its fear and desperation - and ought to leave its customers questioning the wisdom of their investment in a closed, proprietary, one-vendor-fits-all, expensive and out dated virtualization platform.
Comments (15)
Feb 26, 2009
Anonymous says:
It is particularly good for Small & Medium sized companies who might otherwi...It is particularly good for Small & Medium sized companies who might otherwise have been totally unable to deploy enterprise grade virtualization in this years "no CAPEX" atmosphere. You can virtualize an estate for zero pounds spent on software (unless you need the Essentials version). What should you do with this unexpected windfall?
We've decide to join in with the reciprocity and are extending 60-days free support to get you over the hump, for those implementing and experimenting with XenServer in their organisations. No excuse at all now for not finding out what all the fuss is about.
"I just know that something good is gonna happen"
Mar 01, 2009
Anonymous says:
You say: "The powerful response to our announcement both in person and via blogs...You say: "The powerful response to our announcement both in person and via blogs and email shows how important our move has been. Customers who have been purchasing virtual infrastructure for resource pooling, live migration, optimal VM placement and who need built-in HA for management, powerful storage management, resource pooling, built-in DR and backup enablement, and with powerful AD-integrated, role based centralized managment for multiple resource pools will find in XenServer a complete free Enterprise Virtual Infrastructure solution."
Now unless I was mis-informed by the Citrix engineer I spoke to at the VMworld Solution Exchange in the Citrix stand, that sentence is misleading. I was told that the level 1 HA features (OEM'ed from Marathon) are NOT part of the free offering. I specifically asked about this again in disbelief when he told me that a survey showed that only 30% of customers were interested in HA so it was left out and that seemed weird to me...
In any case I wish you good luck with this. I hope that the products that you do charge for provide you with sufficient revenue to keep Xenserver alive, let alone continue to be developed further.
Serge M
Mar 02, 2009
Simon Crosby says:
No, I said "Built in HA for Management", which is included in the free XenServer...No, I said "Built in HA for Management", which is included in the free XenServer product. VMware, on the other hand, has just announced an expensive, traditional additional SKU for Virtual Center that purports to fix its massive vulnerability to a single point of failure for Virtual Infrastructure. It's incredible that this same company thinks it can build a "next generation data center OS". Sure guys, bring it on.
Simon
Mar 03, 2009
Anonymous says:
"massive single point of failure"... you guys fix up that issue where if the pri..."massive single point of failure"... you guys fix up that issue where if the primary node of a Xen cluster goes down it requires manual intervention to promote another primary?
And with regards to driver support, what complete rubbish. Since you deem it fit to mention XenServer 4.0 in your post, I'll do the same. How many base hardware vendors have XenServer 4.0 widely listed as certified? How about Enterprise FC array vendors? How about component vendors?
Now go and compare that to the HCL for ESX 3.x. XenServer 4.0 'enterprise ready'? I don't think so.
Mar 04, 2009
Simon Crosby says:
Yes, we fix the VMware issue of failure of management. Every XenServer nod...Yes, we fix the VMware issue of failure of management. Every XenServer node has all state for all servers in the managed cluster. In the event that the pool leader fails, all management state is preserved and we automatically elect a new pool leader and reconnect to management. Pretty cool huh?
With regard to driver support: I was recently with a very large ESX customer of the cloud variety who told me that it takes 6 months from the arrival of a server until they can get it into production, and one of the reasons they are kicking VMware out is that the bulk of that time is getting VMware driver support.
XenServer 5 is enterprise ready, and runs some of the most mission critical workloads. For example, the electronic point of sale software that accounts for 40% of the food purchased on the high street in the UK runs on XenServer. Mission critical, 24x7, never fail. You are unfortunately wrong.
Mar 12, 2009
Anonymous says:
You are ignoring the fact ESX has a much, much wider HCL, and focusing on a sing...You are ignoring the fact ESX has a much, much wider HCL, and focusing on a single isolated case. This customer failed in checking the HCL, and is blaming VMware, nice.
Also, you fixed a VMware issue of failure on management ? VMware has not this kind of problem.
Also, for each case you mention on Xen customers, you have 50 for ESX, or you will deny ESX rules this market ?
You are very unfortunately wrong.
Use fair argumentation please !
Anonymous replies:
Mar 10, 2009
Anonymous says:
Interesting to hear you saying that VMware's response was essentially FUD. ...Interesting to hear you saying that VMware's response was essentially FUD. When Citrix dropped this bombshell I was waiting to see how VMware would respond. So far I've not been impressed.
We're a VMware customer, and yesterday had a call directly from VMware trying to sell us a "reduced price" enterprise licence. I pointed out that the price they're asking is double the cost of our entire server room, and asked how they're planning to respond to Citrix making Xenmotion available for free?
Strangely enough, they didn't seem quite so keen to get our business after that. I can't help but get the feeling they're doing their level best to claw money out of their existing customers before people realise what Citrix have done. I don't tend to appreciate companies trying to fleece me, and that's very much how the call yesterday felt.
Mar 12, 2009
Anonymous says:
"...and whenever we compete head to head, we win" "No, ESX is still a 32 bit x..."...and whenever we compete head to head, we win"
"No, ESX is still a 32 bit x86 only hypervisor with narrow focus and highly limited capabilities"
Limited capabilities ? You can only be kidding with this one. Let's just mention in general, you need to DOUBLE memory to use Xen, due to lack of memory sharing and ballooning. Not to mention many, many other stuff.
Very good marketing material to impress uninformed people !
I am a hadcore Citrix fan since the MetaFrame era (holding CCA, CCEA, CCIA certifications), but I am realistic enough to see VMware is simply ahead on virtualization ...
This blog is pure propaganda, after all, 500MM is not a small money :-D
Mar 12, 2009
Anonymous says:
"..6 months for VMware to offer supported drivers" That is a huge LIE. Be hon..."..6 months for VMware to offer supported drivers"
That is a huge LIE.
Be honest, use fair argumentation ! Every single piece of enterprise hardware from the major vendors are supported by ESX.
Talking about drivers, what about the generic Linux drivers used by Xen ?
BE HONEST on your comments !
Mar 12, 2009
Anonymous says:
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Bottom line is VMware is matured product in virtualization world and to reach at that level company like Citrix or MS need to have very honest approach rather than doing this kind propaganda.
Good luck on fooling those FOOLS.
Thanks,
Vikash Kumar Roy
Mar 12, 2009
Anonymous says:
I think Simon is smart enough to understand any technical person would laugh on ...I think Simon is smart enough to understand any technical person would laugh on this.
This is really aimed to fool non-technical people. A FUD in other word.
The funniest part is: "Customers tell me one of the reasons they are throwing out ESX ...."
Customers throwing out ESX ? hehehehe ... Simon spokes just like if Xen is taking over ... stop the dream Simon, VMware dominates the market and you cannot deny that.
Apr 02, 2009
Simon Crosby says:
I made no assertion to the fact that VMware is not dominant. It is. ...I made no assertion to the fact that VMware is not dominant. It is. It's also expensive, closed, slow, and locks customers into a single vendor proprietary stack. Other than that it's great.
Mar 16, 2009
Anonymous says:
Simon, Can I use the "free" Citrix offering to host VMs that I can then in turn...Simon,
Can I use the "free" Citrix offering to host VMs that I can then in turn rent or lease? Or is this only for the licensed paid for version? I've tried getting to the EULA via the web page, but can't seem to find it without signing in.
Thanks!
Apr 01, 2009
S A says:
When I originally read the announcement about the free XenServer I became excite...When I originally read the announcement about the free XenServer I became excited - so much so that I pulled 3x DL140g3 from production and set up a new Xen farm... only to learn that I needed a trial Essential license for most of the things.
Then I read that March 30 will bring the new perpetual free license but HA won't be among them... so it's April 1st, new Update 3 has arrived for my recently installed, FREE* XenServers... what can I expect?
My HA test yet to be conducted but it will expire soon and when I check the prices in your "shop" there's no such thing as HA or Essential pack but only an utterly confusing mess with rip-off prices:
https://xensource.ltg.info/xenshop/productselection.aspx
"Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition
Perpetual License ($2860) with Subscription Advantage ($440)
Annual Server License ($2200)
Citrix XenServer Standard Edition
Perpetual License ($858) with Subscription Advantage ($132)
Annual Server License ($660)"
For starter: just WTF is XenServer Standard Edition??? XenServer IS FREE, isn't it?
As for the Enterprise - what is this "with Subscription Advantage ($440)" crap?
You know I haven't touched any Citrix before but it seems it was a very smart thing - I'm telling you with these lame RIPOFF ATTEMPTS you are destroying your newly raised profile's reputation among Citrix newbies.
Come clean and put $3,300 as price, don't try to sell it as something extra, pal.
This pricing is LAME and it is BAD news - mostly for you because it's not only that Essentials are RIDICULOUSLY OVERPRICED but also I cannot throw out that worthless Subscription crap so I WON'T BUY ANYTHING, period.
Bring out a REASONABLY PRICED standalone HA option (e,g $400-500 per POOL) or eat this lame, laughably-priced Essentials ripoff.
Ahh and that "he told me that a survey showed that only 30% of customers were interested in HA so it was left out" is the biggest bullcrap I have ever heard.
In reality HA is the ONLY reason anyone would buy this Essentials now, that's why they did not include it. There's nothing wrong with it, just stop BSing, please.
However selling it for $3k is a stupid joke, a classic out-of-touch marketing-based pricing, nothing else - if you are aiming to change market dynamics then I can tell you it won't happen: no free XS user will buy it for this crazy price (per server licensing is an even worse joke.)
Apr 02, 2009
Simon Crosby says:
It seems we confused you with the somewhat arcane launch vehicle. It looks...It seems we confused you with the somewhat arcane launch vehicle. It looks to me as though you're looking at old web pages. Those are not the prices, and they must have been presented to you in some error.
www.xenserver5.com should have the correct pricing. XenServer is absolutely free; you can buy support for $1500 per year if you want, and then you Zcan purchase either Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition, which gives you HA and DRS, Provisioning Services, Workflow or Essentials for XenServer Platinum, which adds virtual Lab Management.
These products offer very substantial value at well under 50% of the price that VMware charges for the same features.
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