View From The Floor - Doug Lane Day 1

By VSM News Staff
published: Wednesday, February 25 2009

VMware, Citrix Escalate to a Two-Front War at VMworld Europe

Blogging live from VMworld Europe 09 - Doug Lane, Senior Director of Product Management, Virtual Computer

Day one of VMworld Europe 2009 has come to a close, and so far it has been virtualization bellwethers VMware and Citrix who have created the biggest buzz in Cannes.  VMware leveled a counter-punch to Citrix's recently announced client hypervisor collaboration with Intel by announcing an Intel-centric client hypervisor initiative of its own, while Citrix took aim at VMware's core server virtualization business with an announcement that it would make a production-ready version of its XenServer product available free of charge.

During today's keynote, VMware CEO Paul Maritz unveiled a partnership with Intel to implement a "bare-metal" client hypervisor, dubbed VMware Client Virtualization Platform (CVP), which will enable virtual desktops created by the VMware View virtual desktop infrastructure framework to be run offline on loosely connected devices such as laptops without the need for a non-virtualized host operating system.  While it is a significant announcement, it likely would have taken on greater significance were it not for a couple of key factors:

• VMware previously introduced a client hypervisor concept at the last VMworld event in September, and while the Intel collaboration demonstrates a further commitment to client-side virtualization, details about the availability and pricing model for the VMware client hypervisor remain very non-specific a full five months later.
• The fact that Citrix was first out the gate with an Intel client hypervisor partnership is conspicuous given the long-standing partnership Citrix has with Microsoft, the company that owns the predominant client operating system.  Meanwhile, VMware is engaged in a head-to-head battle with Microsoft in the server virtualization market, which is not likely to foster a spirit of collaboration on client virtualization.

As VMware moved to close the gap with Citrix in the fast-emerging client virtualization segment, Citrix turned its attention back to the more traditional data center battleground by announcing that it will make a more feature-rich version of its XenServer server virtualization platform available free of charge.  While offering a free version of commercial server virtualization platform is nothing new, Citrix contends that the free XenServer offering, which includes features such as centralized management, zero-down-time virtual machine migration, and a breadth of storage options, provides enough meat on the bone to be adopted at scale in production data centers on a stand-alone basis.

Citrix apparently will not deviate from the traditional model of layering more advanced paid features on top of a free base virtualization platform.  They announced Citrix Essentials, a bundle that adds advanced features to the free XenServer product for an incremental fee.  Of further significance is the fact that Citrix Essentials is also designed to tie in with Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platform and System Center management suite.  The clear implication is that while VMware is the undisputed leader in the server virtualization market, Citrix and Microsoft intend to team up to make a run at the millions of servers that aren't yet running virtualization technology.

Aside from the flurry of vendor announcements that always coincide with a VMworld kick-off, another topic on people's minds was the level of attendance at this year's show.   While the unofficial word on the street is that attendance is down compared to last year's European event, there does appear to be a healthy turnout of both exhibitors and attendees in spite of the global economic downturn.  If a few thousand people can still slide through a trip to the south of France on an expense report, maybe all is not as bad as it seems.

Now that the big news is likely out of the way, I will spend some time over the next couple of days investigating some of the smaller virtualization vendors who have turned up in Cannes, as well as sitting in on some of the breakout sessions that are still to come.  Stay tuned for further updates.

VMworld Europe 2009 Coverage , Virtual Computer