Citrix signals return to the mainstream hypervisor market with a product it says isn’t quite ready for the job
Cites ‘aggressive licensing changes’ from rivals, but like Broadcom only sells bundles
Citrix has decided to return to the market for mainstream hypervisors with a version of its XenServer product which it currently claims isn’t ready for the job.
The Cloud Software Group business unit on Thursday declared “XenServer is widening its support statement to embrace all types of workloads.”
Citrix more-or-less gave up on XenServer as a mainstream hypervisor in the early 2010s, when analyst firm Gartner felt it was “no longer investing strictly to keep up with market leaders VMware and Microsoft for traditional server virtualization” and instead focused on trying to satisfy hyperscalers and delivering a great platform for its own products.
Jose Augustin, Citrix’s senior director of product management, acknowledged Citrix’s retreat by describing XenServer as “recognized for its robust capabilities in Citrix environments” before adding his view that the time is ripe for a return to the mainstream.
“The hypervisor market is in a state of unprecedented flux,” he wrote. “For years, organizations have navigated a complex landscape of virtualization technologies, often balancing performance, features, and crucially, cost. But recent shifts, particularly the aggressive licensing changes from major players, have amplified the already intense pressure on IT budgets.”
That major player is almost certainly Broadcom’s VMware, which as The Register has often reported, stopped selling standalone products, now only sells four bundles, and has a fierce focus on its VMware Cloud Foundation which includes the compute, network, and storage virtualization tools needed to create a software-defined private cloud. Customers report Broadcom’s pricing for VCF is often considerably higher than the sums they previously paid for a smaller collection of VMware products and that they may not need all the components in the suite. Broadcom retorts that VCF is so powerful those who implement all its components quickly see substantial ROI.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Citrix sees an opportunity.
Augustin pitched XenServer 8.4, released in March 2024, as the product that makes Citrix a contender, despite the company not using that pitch when the product debuted and its own website describing the product as “The most optimized hypervisor for Citrix workloads” at the time of writing.
The Citrix man also teased a forthcoming XenServer 9 that “is already in the works” and will include “even more groundbreaking innovations and a wealth of customer-requested features, further solidifying XenServer’s position as the premier choice for modern virtualization.”
That verbiage is highly contestable, as Citrix’s market share is small and analysts of The Register’s acquaintance rate VMware’s stack as the industry’s most mature virtualization offering.
Citrix has also created software bundles that many believe result in big price increases. And the company says it only sells XenServer as part of a subscription to its Premium license.
So good luck, Citrix, as you try to battle VMware and Red Hat, Nutanix, OpenNebula and other contenders. ®