Citrix Feels Cloud Synergy

I happen to like Citrix and it's not just because they always seem to be nice to me. While VMware always grabs the virtualization limelight, one could just as easily argue that Citrix is the true pioneer.

Citrix invented desktop virtualization way back in 1989. Server virtualization was invented by IBM for its System 360 (a mainframe is just a big server after all) in 1967 or 68 and VMware didn't start until 1998, almost a decade after Citrix.

Now it's true that VMware is outshining Citrix in the dollars department. Last year VMware pulled in $3.7 billion to Citrix's $2.2 billion, but neither is shabby -- especially in the economy. And those were dollars, not Euros or drachmas.

Citrix's next frontier is not quite space, but just below, the cloud. At its recent Synergy show, Citrix had a number of things to say about the cloud. Here is the rundown:

Citrix is making its next move in Windows virtualization with Avalon. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this but it seems like it is really taking off all the limits or nearly all the limits from what you can do with Windows virt but turning it into a cloud service, either private or public. With Avalon, your PC or laptop could become a private Windows cloud. And Citrix isn't thinking small, but by teaming up with Amazon Web Services will let you run any combination of XenApp, XenDesktop, or Windows Server. We're going to need a bigger boat!

Next up is Podia, a company recently acquired by Citrix which offers "social" oriented collaboration tool. Now that Citrix owns Podia, it has begun integrating it with other bits of cloud/Web software such as Citrix's own GoToMeeting, ShareFile, and EverNote, as well as Microsoft SkyDrive and GoogleDrive.

Podia is a bit like Groove being based on the concept of workspaces and teams, except Podia was built entirely with the Internet in mind.

Citrix is also not forgetting its open source loyalists, and announced the Citrix CloudPlatform. This software, based on the Apache CloudStack, is a cloud orchestration tool that hooks to Amazon via built-in APIs.

Posted by Doug Barney on 05/22/2012 at 12:47 PM