Is Citrix the Real Challenge to VMware?

Sure, Hyper-V is an improvement over the downright awful Virtual Server, but it doesn’t match what VMware offers. In fact, Hyper-V’s most impressive trait is simply that it’s from Microsoft. Its feature set, though, is still lacking.

That said, Microsoft’s playbook is well known. Throw a product out there just to be in the space. Improve it until it can’t be entirely dismissed as inferior. Improve it some more until it is “good enough.” Then, divide and conquer.

Hyper-V isn’t generally regarded as “good enough” quite yet, but this time around, Microsoft’s playbook has a new wrinkle: partnerships. Last week, Citrix and Microsoft unveiled a new virtualization partnership. Citrix’ new virtualization management suite, Citrix Essentials, will support Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

Coming on the heels of a similar Microsoft deal with Red Hat, Redmond is clearly aiming to box in VMware, leveraging the one thing that VMware doesn’t have: an open ecosystem. The Xen community is strong, and through simple partnering agreements, Microsoft is taking advantage of an ecosystem it’s not even participating in.

Say what you want about Microsoft, but they know how to compete.

However, it may very well be Citrix, not Microsoft, which is best positioned to benefit from this strategy. “Citrix has a good story to tell with Hyper-V interoperability,” said Chris Wolf, senior analyst, Burton Group.

“There are a lot of shops that will never bet against Microsoft. Now, with [Citrix] XenServer they don’t have to. A virtual machine on XenServer will run on Hyper-V. If you want virtualization today and advanced features like Live Migration, you don’t have to wait for Hyper-V to evolve. Just roll out XenServer.”

Should Citrix worry about a Microsoft trap?

Microsoft and Citrix have a long-standing partnership in place, so extending it to virtualization is no great leap. “Microsoft’s strategy in my opinion is: ‘anyone but VMware,’” Wolf said. “That mainly benefits Citrix. If there’s something that Microsoft doesn’t have, they tell their customers to go to Citrix.”

A main part of the anti-VMware message is that VMware traps you in a closed system. With Microsoft, Citrix, Red Hat, and, well, anyone other than VMware, the message goes, you benefit from an open environment and the innovation an open environment encourages.

As Citrix CTO Simon Crosby put it, “Our goal is to get fast, free and compatible virtualization on every server. We’re opposed to VMware’s continued closed-source, proprietary vertical stack that excludes other vendors in the ecosystem.”

Kind of ironic coming from a Microsoft partner, isn’t it?

Crosby conceded the point, but as a long-term Microsoft partner, he doesn’t consider Microsoft to be a closed-source vendor. Sure, they’re stingy with their source code. Yes, they have a history of strong arming customers to lock out competitors, but they don’t exclude third-party vendors who add value to their offerings.

To make his point, he pointed to Windows. “Windows has always been an open platform in the sense that Microsoft has always recognized the role of ISVs in extending the platform and addressing customer needs,” Crosby said.

To put a more cynical spin on it, so long as you pay your proper fealty, Microsoft is perfectly happy to keep you around. Empires require alliances, after all.

Being more charitable, Microsoft has always embraced ecosystems around its software and platforms to a limited degree. Today, the nature and value of platform ecosystems has changed – as has the means for monetizing the solutions those ecosystems are built around. With virtualization, Microsoft is changing with the times and embracing an open, multi-vendor ecosystem.

At least that’s the story for today.

Is “free” a strategy?

Another factor to consider is that Citrix is now offering XenServer with an array of high-end features for free. VMware, on the other hand, currently limits its freebies to low-end, limited-use solutions.

Citrix believes that hypervisors are a commodity, virtualization itself is the easy part, and customers will pay for the hard part: management. This is savvy positioning. Getting a foot in the door by giving stuff away is a time-tested marketing strategy, and as other vendors follow suit and offer free or even low-cost virtualization solutions, Citrix has a head start on managing mixed Windows and Linux environments.

Next Page: Emerging virtualization markets