Comments on: Retrospective, What is New is Old?

By: KSowers

KSowers — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:49:30 +0000

We recently went to virtualization in order to save money, to have continuation of operations (fail-over ability to a remote out of state site because we reside in a hurricane prone state ), to reduce server sprawl and to have more management and control. I must say I appreciate your assessment. I also am forced to look at hard facts and look at what we are currently using versus what is in the market today and where it may go. We have an open mind but we surely have a clearly defined goal for what we need today with a vision for the future. We are looking at all options but truly focused on Citrix, Hyper-V and VMWare. VMWare is expensive with many tools. We see them as the Microsoft of Virtualization. So although they may have features we want, we are definitely looking at the rest of the pack. Citrix is definitely an option we are pursuing. I am following many Virtualization News sites and trying to get a bearing of where it is all going. I appreciate you input to Mr. Crosby and wish we could talk more about your products. Wish you were more clear on your site about what your options are for your products. I understand the pack that Citrix and Microsoft has formed to get in the market against VMWare but wonder over time where that will go and if it will last once Microsoft positions itself where it wants? I would like to see three major competitors if not more and would like to see Citrix push it products harder, but don’t understand the agreement between Citrix and Microsoft of course and maybe that is the reason to remain tight lipped. Who knows what will come and we are watching closely and in the mean time I need to make a decision.

By: Schorschi

Schorschi — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:04:07 +0000

Simon, thanks reading my blog, flattered. But confused? Although I appreciate any and all feedback. I do not considered myself confused. As for market data, that is either predicative or past history. Market trending is like the stock market, the past means nothing, and no one knows the future. So I did not and do not rely on market data, market share or popular trends, but talked with specific people that are in a position to determine the use of Xen in their respective organizations from Mom and Pop to Fortune 10 in scale, and I was surprised to hear, being a fan of Xen, one all to frequent comment, in various forms that basically amounted to… ‘Xen is not a strategic platform for us.’ Just that simple and brief. Also, talking to other virtualization engineers, some I have know for many years since the eailer of virtualization adoption days (circa 2004), I got the same basic perspective… ‘We are not running Xen in our proof-of-concept lab at this time.’ Am I not to believe them? But when I asked about KVM, VMware, or even Hyper-V, I got various comments to the effect… ‘…is in our the concept lab’ or ‘…is a strategic direction for us.’ True, I am not making a statistical argement here, and I am not interviewing 100s of experts, and I am sure you have signficant market data to support your position. However, I tend to talk to people and the people I talked with, are looking at Hyper-V and KVM more not less than anything else, and that means in the next few years I think things will change. My blog entry reflects my perception from those I have had first hand communication with. If Xen continues? Stronger or not? So much the better, I like larger product mix more than a smaller one. The more virtualization options the better.

By: Simon Crosby

Simon Crosby — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:09:44 +0000

My goodness, what a confused chap you are. Xen will not survive? Has it occurred to you that there are more servers virtualized with Xen than VMware? What segment did you fail to look at? Oh yes, that little thing called “cloud”. Xen has about 20% server socket share today in the enterprise, and that is rapidly growing, not losing ground. Quite where you gather your data I’m not sure, but if you want to base it on some raw fact, feel free to reach out to me or to the xen.org folks and we’ll be happy to set you straight. Simon Crosby, CTO Virtualization, Citrix