From a recent email, it seems the rumors that Citrix will be acquiring XenSource have come to pass, an acquisition reported to be around 500 million. From an open source university research project to a commercial endeavor started up just over a year ago to a 500 million dollar acquisition? That’s not to shabby!
Of course you can’t help but assume that Microsoft’s partnership with XenSource from a while back helped propel this acquisition into fruition. And coupled with Citrix’s focus on the Windows desktop and application delivery (primarily through their terminal delivery mechanism) you can’t help making speculations that MSFT will be given more than enough reasons to place their sights on making a little acquisition of their own. XenSource in and of itself wouldn’t present enough of an advantage to MSFT given they already have VirtualPC/Server. But take the install base of Citrix and couple that with the advantages that Xen provides over and above that of VPC/S and you have what can only be seen as something that may just be a little too tempting for MSFT not to take a long hard look at.
Guess time will tell, but in the mean time,
A Letter to XenSource Customers and Partners from
Peter J. Levine, CEO and President, XenSourceAugust 15th, 2007
Dear member of the XenSource community,
First, I would like to thank you for helping fuel XenSource’s tremendous growth in 2007 which includes the following highlights:
Over 650 commercial customers, with 25 new customers joining each week Introduction of XenSource v4 product line, a product which includes new enterprise class features and brings us to a strong position relative to our competitors Ecosystem partnerships with 15 distributors and 300 VARs worldwide Strong international growth and entry into new markets including Japan and Australia-New Zealand OEM agreements with many leading ISVs and OEMs including NEC and Symantec
It is with great pleasure XenSource shares with you the news that Citrix has signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenSource in an acquisition expected to close in Q4, 2007. For those who may not be familiar with Citrix, they are the market leaders in desktop and application delivery infrastructure for the Windows ecosystem, with $1.6B in annual revenue.
We believe the XenSource-Citrix agreement is fantastic news for you, our customers and partners because the acquisition will provide XenSource with the resources and global presence to deliver increased levels of support, training, delivery and most importantly, increased new product innovation. XenSource and Citrix share a common strategy and focus around adding value to the Microsoft Windows ecosystem and delivering value-added solutions to Windows and the entire Microsoft suite. The combined company will deliver the market’s best virtualization for Windows customers from the data center to the desktop.
XenSource will become the core of a new division within Citrix focused on virtualization and management solutions. All XenSource employees will join Citrix with roles within the new organization or elsewhere within Citrix. Personally, I will lead the division as SVP and GM and report to Citrix CEO Mark Templeton, furthering the expected smooth transition.
Open source Xen is the foundation in which XenSource’s success has been built, and the contributions and participation of the community are valued. Citrix shares our commitment that our contributions to open source Xen continue strongly, with the community flourishing transparently without the constraints of commercial software development. To achieve this, we will develop procedures in the very near future for independent oversight of the Xen project. XenSource will absolutely continue on our core strategy of leveraging the valuable innovation of the open source Xen community and creating commercial solutions based on Xen.
We will expand our current efforts in server virtualization and continue the recently announced extensions in v4 to storage management with our OEM partner, Symantec. Citrix gives XenSource the fuel to scale our business globally and to also extend our strategy to virtualize the core Citrix products in desktop and application delivery infrastructure. This will enable us to offer you our customers and partners a market leading virtualization solution from the datacenter to the desktop.
Thanks again for your support.
Peter J. Levine
CEO and President
XenSource
