Best way to stimulate the industry: Citrix should agree to stop selling XenServer if VMware stops selling View!

you (we) always complain about lack of competition and you dream about monopoly... I like it !

The idea is not so amazing. As Kata Tank hinted, competition is the only thing that can bring any technology forward. Without competition, aka in a monopoly, things do not move - why should they? If you are big and fat and in a comfortable position - why move at all?

Interesting idea, but I think that XenDesktop in particular is better because of VMware View. Citrix dug deep, with XD 4.5, and suprised a lot of us with the evolution of XD5.0. What I would like to see though is both of them step back from the land grab of who's sold (or given away) the most licenses, and concentrate on making their products better.

Long may the competition continue on both server and desktop !

Or a Citrix XenApp desktop running on vSphere?  

There's still a lot of talk of XenServer being better for XenApp\XenDesktop - but is this true?

I like the thought of a lot of the confusion being taken away, I must admit!

As an aside, if you have a solid, working XenApp deployment, then the transitional pain to move to XenDesktop, for little additional benefit, isn't worth it. If you have no XenApp, XenDesktop, whatever, environment now, then I can see the benefit in seriously looking at XenDesktop. Is this consensus shared?

in the technology space, it's a race to zero dollars as a sign of maturity and competition (primarily from Open Source).

I think the first real barrier to adoption is the complexity (or lack of integration) of the existing solutions. The second is cost. The third is scalability.

To solve these adoption issues, the players (VMW, CTXS, MS, etc.) must offer their solutions as a wholly integrated solution with modularity. Right now, each product is a moving target with constant singular product revisions & updates.

On that note, the hypervisor is a commodity, it is cheap. All 3 vendors do indeed give their base HV away.

Also, one can argue that desktop virtualisation (or hosted desktops) has been around longer than type 1 hypervisors in the form of remote control or remote access.

I think it's got to be one of the least thought out ideas. comparing xenserver biz to the ESX ecosystem is laughable, and the only reason really Citrix is still selling any serious VDI licenses is because VMware/Teradici has not figured out yet how to engineer PCoIP into a more WAN friendly protocol. But they are working on it. Brian, do you really believe Citrix stands any chance against Vmware?

Disclaimer, I work for EMC.

What's the definition of "having your head in a cloud"?

PCoIP Protocol works great on the WAN.  

Time for all you Citrix folk to give that one up!

480 VMworld Labs VMware View 4.5 desktops hosted on East Coast US and delivered to the show in San Francisco

240 VMworld Labs desktops also hosted in East Coast US delivered to VMworld EU in Copenhagen.

Teradici was showing desktops hosted in Vancouver at the Copenhagen VMworld as well.  

Many customers in production and connecting their remote uses from continent to continent.  

Regarding the somewhat monopoly position of VMware in the server virt space... and the more of an open field in VDI... I don't care how good VMware is, it is too freaking expensive and they don't seem to have any interest in reducing the pricing unless they have no alternative... or at least that is my take on it.

Being the FOSS advocate, I still believe that VDI will only go mainstream once significant portions of it are open.  Sure, any proprietary solution will probably do well staying closed, but VDI will only be widely adopted once it is opened up.  I don't see either VMware nor Citrix ever doing that... so I don't think either of them will be what least to mainstream VDI.

I'm sure many of you feel strongly that I have no clue what I'm talking about and that is fine.  Don't waste your breath telling me how wrong you think I am, because I'll just ignore you. :)

"I'm sure many of you feel strongly that I have no clue what I'm talking about and that is fine.  Don't waste your breath telling me how wrong you think I am, because I'll just ignore you. :)"

That's my new tagline!

give me maturity and choice.

The needs of your organization determine how mature and how much choice you require.

Limiting choice to fewer options will not solve maturity.

End of matter.

@system.fracture. Sorry I just can't take the vendor BS anymore. Who the F are you trying to kid. Working for a storage vendor who is over priced and whose business model is under threat that may end up in the hands of Oracle or IBM. It must be the stupidest argument I have ever heard from a vendor. I simple put to you EMC is trying to win the desktop vs. MS and their friends. If any vendor made such a stupid statement to me in person I would punch them in the face and then show them the door. I hate arrogant vendors like EMC.

@Stuart. Yet more BS, not covering multiple sessions and how much bandwidth. Of course you can gang bang a network link with UDP junk that retransmits over and over. Let customers convert of RDP View to PCoIP to show real traction. That will be a key point for VMW to prove. It still amazes me why people think this stuff is so easy. If it was, RDP with big monster MS would be way out in front. They are not, RemoteFX is hype for the most part so let's stop spreading BS and get real world data. Of yeah Piece of $hit over IP is VDi only, another point MAJOR point that should not be overlooked.

@Scott, nothing is going to be free open source, commercial and mainstream. It's the greatest myth in the world. Everybody has to make money for it to work. Open source just helps with price pressure and avoid lock-in... whoops stop typing you are not listening. :-)

That would be a good idea if it weren't for the fact that View is a better desktop product.

@ Larry, according to who?  Even the die hard VMWare fanbois I work with admit that XenDesktop is better than View, especially for any environment that involves WAN connectivity or multimedia.  My personal stance is if neither of these matter to you then take your pick.

@Brian

Larry Monuteaux is a prime example of why choice should exist, whether it's bad or good.

I don't want to start quoting the Matrix.

I firmly believe that XenDesktop is far superior to View in many ways.

ThinApp... CVP.... VMware vision and execution...

VMware's vision does not align with mine, but it may for others.

Citrix seems to love the competition anyways so they would never go for it, VMware IMO would jump on this chance because they only care about vSphere.

From my experience, I don't think this will make any big difference. In fact, most people that we work with are already considering XenDesktop on vSphere.. I have not run into even few situations where people want to deploy XenDesktop on XenServer..

The fact of the matter is XenDesktop [regardless of what hypervisor it runs on] is proving to be expensive, complex, and does not address the use cases that customers want [Integrated offline VDI + branch]..

Until Citrix addresses these 3 big challenges [Cost, Complexity and Coverage] -- it will not make a big difference in the marketplace..

Srini

View still going? ;)

There are better solutions out there to view and XenDesktop in my opinion...

Citrix have the best protocol and that's about it.... VMware have erm....

Both lack the management features that users really need forcing most of us to do without or use expensive 3rd party solutions to plug the holes!

Maybe Citrix should open up ICA :) and let the others stimulate the industry

I would like to kick out ESX to reduce my Desktop Virt costs. VSphere is a big costs that will grow as my virtual desktop instances continue to grow. @Larry perhaps Scott Davis will grow a pair and offer to debate Citrix on why View is better in public. Still waiting for VMW to stop talking and acting like pussies and show some substance.

ummm.......Citrix doesn't sell XenServer, it is free !!!!

I wouldn't neccessarly agree with this.  it is hard to discpute that VMware has a better hypervisor (probably always will) and XenDesktop is superior to View but we need the competition and the options of other products.

There are many organizations that do not want the bells and whistles or pay the amount of monety required for VMware Hypervisor.  Also, I believe standardization does count for something.  I rather run View on VMware or XenDesktop on Xenserver for the economies of scale on support, hardware purchases, etc.

Good topic though as it has received a lot of responses.

Stuart Robinson your head is in the clouds... can we please stop feeding this kind of BS to customers and to the industry? it only gives VMWARE less credibility then they already have