Citrix-Microsoft alliance raises bar for VMware 23 February, 2009 By Paul Weinberg

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That is the prognosis of Mark Bowker, an analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. He noted that Microsoft has an immense customer base with the Windows operating system but its Hyper V-based virtualization solutions will not have a complete suite of management features until the vendor's Windows Server 2008 R2 is released in 2010 at the latest.

In steps corporate partner Citrix Systems, where its XenSource-based management options for virtualization are ramped up and made complementary to Microsoft's System Center management console and Hyper V hypervisor.

"The ability of Microsoft to drive Hyper V into the market and Citrix's ability to provide value that is clearly missing on top of an existing footprint is a great example of how Microsoft and Citrix continue to succeed as partners. Microsoft and Citrix have always had an overlap of who does what best and this will continue to take place with server virtualization, desktop virtualization and application virtualization. The customer ultimately ends up the winner," added Bowker.

Meanwhile, John Humphreys at Citrix predicted that his company's latest decision to offer without charge live migration for virtual machines and the management of as many physical servers and VMs as possible should eliminate a major barrier in virtualization adoption for small and medium sized enterprises.

Services like these can cost $5,000 per server if one accesses comparable options from VMware instead, explained Humphreys, senior director, virtualization and management division at Citrix.

"In this economic climate a no-cost solution is pretty compelling, especially when a lot of these organizations are having their [IT] budgets cut."

Up to now, only the major hypervisors for basic stripped down virtualization -- i.e. Citrix's XenSource, Microsoft's Hyper V and VMware's ESX -- have been free from their respective vendors.

In addition, Citrix is introducing new advancement management tools in its Essentials for XenServer that are priced in the $1,500 to $5,000 per server range to compliment both XenSource and Hyper V based virtualization. These include automated lab management, advanced storage integration, dynamic provisioning services, workflow orchestration and high availability.

Of particular note, automated lab management relies on virtualization to consolidate and automate the currently split functions in the creation of any new applications -- development, testing and quality assurance.

"What consumes a lot of an IT administrator's time, effort, and energy is the provisioning of software that they need to do [for new application features]."

The highlight of the Citrix announcement -- the free basic virtualization management options -- is going to put a lot of competitive pressure on VMware, commented Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates.

"Bottom line, this is just great for customers. This is a great opportunity for enterprises to dive into a fully managed virtual deployment without having to put out any dollars."

Still, VMware still carries advanced management options for virtualization such as capacity planning, life cycle management and stage management that remain missing in the new Citrix arsenal, continued Mann.

"VMware still leads and has a lot of better capabilities in the data center, especially but this is a solid attack on many fronts for both Citrix and Microsoft."