I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal
It seems like everyone wants to dabble in the Open Source market these days. First came the RedHat, VA Linux and other public companies using Open Source technologies to ramp up. Then IT giants such as Novell, Sun and Apple started to come to markets with products faster due to their newfound Open Source roots. Now a lot of other companies are jumping on the bandwagon and introducing products based on Open Source technologies or purchasing other companies to help them do so quickly.
Citrix has purchased XenSource, a company that provided virtualization products based on the Xen Open Source virtualization platform. XenSource is now a prodcut of Citrix that is meant to compete directly with VMWare on the virtualization scene. Why use something like XenSource instead of just building a virtual cluster based on the actual Open Source Xen packages? Citrix offers annual support plans for Standard Edition, which allows customers to receive support. In addition, Citrix is providing free web-based resources, including online product documentation, a knowledge base, and discussion forums, as is done with their popular Metaframe products. And of course, XenSource becomes the preferred platform to run Citrix clusters on. Not that VMWare won’t do a fine job, but support will be a lot easier if you’re using XenSource.