Citrix Rides A Wave Of Virtualization Success

The Challenge
Citrix has been focusing a lot on desktop virtualization. There is awareness within the company that channel partners tend to deploy server virtual machines rather than client VMs. Al Monserrat, vice president of worldwide channels and emerging product sales for Citrix, said there's "a big interest in client [virtualization]" and that the biggest hurdle is "getting people familiarized."

Monserrat won't get an argument from solution providers about the need for educating the channel, either.

"The ability to manage a number of desktop sessions from a modest two or three images would be huge," said Robert Nitrio, president of Ranvest Associates, an Orangevale, Calif.-based solution provider. But, he added, "We're the evangelist ... but we need to know how to do things in order to be a good evangelist.

"What always works is the ability to get our hands on the product, so we can actually play with it, learn how to use it and test it," Nitrio said. "A mere Webcast is not enough. We have to be able to get our hands on it, test it and see how it works."

It's unclear how much time, effort and money Citrix is willing to spend to do just that, and be able to compete with virtualization veteran VMware and software giant Microsoft—with which Citrix has had an awkward relationship over the years.

Citrix executives said they want to raise partners' comfort levels in deploying desktop virtualization, but also want to ensure partners are rightfully compensated. "Citrix scores every quarter between 92 to 95 percent in customer loyalty," Monserrat pointed out, and said the vendor will make "a long-term investment" and build "a core revenue stream" for partners.

But they've got to get that message out during a tricky product cycle. And they have to continue to walk a fine line with Microsoft—which will launch the potentially competitive Hyper-V this summer, at the very time Citrix execs say they need to keep collaborating with the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.

"No matter which route a customer takes, the core component will ensure virtualization works in both," said Citrix's Crosby, who noted: "Hyper-V is an OS with a hypervisor bundled in it" while "Citrix scales better and supports large numbers of CPUs."

Bringing this high level of groundbreaking virtualization to the world will not be easy. VARs asking for strong support, education and training from Citrix know what they're talking about. But if Citrix can clear those hurdles, it stands to change IT dramatically and, in the process, reinvent itself just one more time.

"Maybe 10 percent of the market has virtualized their servers," IPM's Bari said. "Probably 99 percent of that is VMware. When it gets to 30 to 45 percent (virtualizing their servers), the market is going to change. When it does, who are going to be the other players? Microsoft and (Citrix's) Xen Server."

The ramp from 10 percent on starts now, with Citrix's big play starting within weeks. All that's left is to convince solution providers to become one with Xen.

EDWARD F. MOLTZEN contributed to this report.

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