Chris Wolf

As a follow-up to my previous post on Synergy 2010, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the cloud and server virtualization announcements. Citrix made the following product announcements at the conference:

• Citrix Unveils Open, Extensible, Turnkey Cloud Solutions
• Citrix Unveils Next XenServer Release as Reports Show Server Virtualization Market Share Growth
• NetScaler Delivers Industry’s First Virtualized Delivery Infrastructure for Microsoft 2010 Apps
• Citrix NetScaler Pay-as-You-Grow “Burst Packs” Make Networking More Elastic

Citrix announced the release of XenServer 5.6, which includes several significant feature improvements:

• Hypervisor-level role-based access controls (RBACs)
• Dynamic memory support
• Dynamic workload balancing
• Automated site recovery (i.e., disaster recovery failover)
• A self-service portal

XenServer 5.5 was the second hypervisor Burton Group certified as enterprise-ready by satisfying 100% of our requisite server virtualization hypervisor evaluation criteria. VMware VI 3.5 and higher is the other hypervisor we consider enterprise-ready. So with XenServer 5.6, Citrix has expanded a solid core offering to add management, mobility, and automation features customers are demanding. XenServer does not have feature parity with VMware vSphere in terms of virtual networking and security appliance integration, but Citrix is getting closer. Citrix’s work on the Open vSwitch project, for example, demonstrates their direction in the virtual networking space.

Citrix’s John Humphries offers more detail on the XenServer 5.6 announcement in this post.

Citrix announced several cloud partnerships at the conference as well, including support from key VMware vCloud partners Rackspace, Terremark, and Carpathia. In what I saw as a disappointment, Citrix elected not to put their cloud partners on stage, with the exception of Rackspace. Hearing details about the partnerships, integration, and management capabilities were of high interest to the attendees. Instead, Citrix elected to give nearly an hour of stage time to Dell CEO Michael Dell. The result was surprising. Of the nearly 4,000 attendees, almost half left in the middle of the keynote, which was universally scathed by blogger/analysts such as Alessandro Perilli and Brian Madden. To say the Dell keynote was a disappointment would be an understatement. In fact, I was left questioning Dell’s leadership. Nothing specific regarding Dell’s plans (e.g., products and cloud plans) was articulated. Dell started his keynote with the phrase “…we’re just getting started,” and while he was referring to the synergy between Citrix and Dell as partners, I took the statement to refer to something else – Dell’s execution in the cloud and virtualization space. From my view of the world, it has seemed that Dell has been trying to get started in cloud and virtualization for years. Sure, there are some good server products, but very little in terms of comprehensive management and a well-articulated strategy. I left the keynote with continued reservations about Dell’s ability to compete with rivals HP and IBM in the cloud space.

I was also left scratching my head about the Citrix decision to give a partner one hour of stage time rather than give CTO Simon Crosby the stage to explicitly articulate the Citrix cloud strategy and execution. To sum it up, the keynote told me that Citrix has partners and is serious about cloud, but left me with little detail as proof. I’ve had several private conversations with Citrix about cloud strategy. I know they are serious and have seen what they are doing on the product side to back up their vision. Unfortunately they failed to present this to their core user base.

Like with the first day keynote, I also covered the cloud and virtualization keynote via Twitter, and I’ll leave you with a few additional thoughts:

• Citrix announced support for XenApp on Amazon Web Services (AWS). XenApp as a SaaS-enabler for Windows apps makes a lot of sense.
• Citrix and Microsoft demonstrated rich integration between Citrix virtualization products and Microsoft System Center. Citrix did not mention or showcase its top-level management products, leaving me to wonder if Citrix was conceding the top management layer to Microsoft.
• Microsoft’s Brad Anderson talked about the virtual desktop utopia that is a single golden image for all. Microsoft could do more to help in this regard by modifying how the Windows OS kernel indexes files and blocks in order to support a non-persistent base OS image with persistent downstream OS layers (e.g., user installed applications and IT-managed application layers).
• With talk of “hybrid clouds,” I couldn’t help but think of how overused the word “hybrid” is in IT. Everything is hybrid. Aren’t hybrid clouds implied? Believe me. I understand the distinction. We identify hybrid clouds because of the management challenges they create. But these challenges are cloud management challenges – period. All clouds will be hybrid in the end.

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Category: Cloud Server Virtualization     Tags: citrixsynergy, cloud, xenserver

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