Citrix recently announced they will have a free enterprise version of XenServer. Based on their feature chart this free XenServer version is the same as the older XenServer Enterprise edition with HA and direct storage integration removed. Since XenDesktop includes XenServer as the default virtualization platform what does XenServer now being free mean to XenDesktop?
First XenDesktop Standard included XenServer Standard which does not offer resource pooling. The Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) in XenDesktop can connect to XenServer but only versions that offer resource pooling. So now with a free enterprise version of XenServer and XenDesktop Standard, the DDC can communicate with XenServer to provide functionality to start/stop/suspend/resume the virtual desktops.
Second VMware Infrastructure controls most of the market for server virtualization especially among large enterprises. This translates to most XenDesktop deployments running on top of VMware Infrastructure. As I discussed in an earlier post the customer will need to pay $200 to $300 retail per user to VMware with XenDesktop being an additional cost. VMware's desktop virtualization product, View, is not too far behind XenDesktop in functionality and is price around $250 per user for the enterprise version that includes VMware Infrastructure. With this price savings customers will look heavily to an all VMware solution.
With a free XenServer, Citrix has the ability to gain market share in the server virtualization market especially for XenApp on XenServer deployments since XenServer performs better than VMware Infrastructure for XenApp workloads. With XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum customers no longer need to pay extra to virtualize the XenApp component as part of XenDesktop. These moves are crucial to get customers to fragment their data center to have more than one virtualization infrastructure. With customers trained on XenServer, it is a small step to convince customers to run XenDesktop on XenServer instead of VMware Infrastructure. When customers use XenServer instead of VMware for their XenDesktop deployment the customer saves a significant amount of money ($200 to $300 per user) since the customer is not paying for VMware Infrastructure.
XenServer never brought in the desired revenue for Citrix so making XenServer free is a smart move. It gives them an opportunity to capture a significant portion of the market and erode VMware's virtual monopoly on server virtualization. It also positions XenServer competitively vs. Hyper-V since Citrix is now the cheaper alternative and offers more features and functionality.
Any questions, comments, or ideas for additional posts are appreciated.
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