Peter Christy

Mile-High Mark

Citrix held its Analyst meeting in Denver recently. It's always a delight to catch up with the Citrix executive team. The big news was the intent to integrate Citrix's "VDI" offering within the broader application delivery offering (XenApp, previously known as Presentation Server). Citrix has done very well with its various bundling strategies over the last few years building off of Citrix's market leadership and market success, and I would bet this will continue the trend. With this move a Citrix XenApp customer can choose to use any of the technologies, including VDI, within the basic seat license. As long as VDI solutions remain a relatively small part of the overall application delivery market (our assumption) this is a smart way of keeping Citrix customers in the fold by making VDI essentially "free."

VMW VDI and Windows 7

In the earlier days, Diane Green predictably spoke contemptuously of Microsoft, sort of like Khrushchev at the UN pounding his shoe on the podium and yelling "we will bury you" (for those of you who are old enough to know what the UN is). The new, wiser VMware is a lot more aware of what's going on in the rest of the industry (good!) but still a little bit psychitzo when it comes to MS. VMW recognizes that Windows 7 may well unleash a major upgrade wave within enterprise customers (all those who never did Vista but are running out of headroom and support with XP) and that this upgrade wave is an ideal time to call the question on remote application delivery alternatives (smart marketing). But it seems that many at VMW still find it distasteful to even speak the word "Windows" without spitting so this strategic argument comes out wrapped in condescension and denigration. VMware needs to think a little more about why people would adopt Windows 7 now in the first place (‘because they are idiots' is probably the wrong answer) and more to the point carefully look at all the things in W/7 that make VDI less valuable (sorry VMW, Microsoft hasn't stood still). Part of the maturation process I guess.

VDI Shoes Drop Left and Right

As we anticipated last month, Citrix isn't the only one stirring up the VDI pot. In conjunction with VMWorld Europe, VMware and Intel announced a partnership on hypervisors. This is too faceted a topic to discuss without the benefits of good wine, but there are similarities and differences. VMW is promoting their own hypervisor and point to their long history in workstation products and the current MAC hypervisor as evidence of their chops. Intel of course expresses love and support for the idea, and doesn't talk about their long involvement with the Xen project. In contrast to the Citrix guys, VMW didn't really say anything about the specifics of their hypervisor (Citrix says the goals are very different from a server hypervisor — see I warned you this needs wine!). Then of course there is X-factor — where MS stands with a client hypervisor. We're sure that the MS gnomes are working hard on this somewhere in the recesses of Redmond (who knows PC's better than MS?) but the fact of the matter is that there is no client hypervisor in MS's public plan ("yes, we have no bananas!"). This is not to say that Microsoft doesn't have opinions on the subject. MS may not have a client hypervisor but thigh-order bit is that what really counts is user state virtualization and application virtualization, basic usability and TCO issues (I don't think that VMW or Citrix would disagree), not the prehey have a knowledgeable and articulate client hypervisor spokesman in the person of Scott Woodgate and he gave an analyst briefing on the MS perspective. Scott's sence or absence of a Type 1 hypervisor. MS thinks that Type 2 hypervisors (application mode virtualization) suffice. Although this sort of puts words in Scott's mouth, if every PC came with a Type 1 hypervisor factory installed and the standard software load built as a virtual machine on top, things would be different, but MS believes that factory hypervisors won't happen any time soon (certainly if MS doesn't have and bless one). It sounds a little circular and self-serving (yes we have no bananas but that's cause we didn't get any!) but it's not un-sensible from a customer perspective. See I warned you this requires good wine. Everyone seems to agree that this isn't a big 2009 business issue, but what happens the rest of this year should be a harbinger for bigger moves in 2010.

Citrix Drops a Fascinating "VDI" Shoe

In the context of disclosing a partnership with Intel, Citrix pulled the veil back on their plans for desktop virtualization. To date the "VDI" solutions (including Citrix' XenDesktop) offered great potential for PC support cost reduction and security but a high price in hardware cost, performance and even basic functionality. Running PC applications on a server increases the cost and decreases the performance. None of this should be surprising because the basic value proposition of a PC is the tight coupling between the processor and the display, and that's exactly what these solutions give up. In our December Desktop Delivery report we noted all that and pointed out the same benefits could accrue if the user's applications were run in a virtual machine on their PC (not on a server) at lower cost (really using that PC for something other than a thin client), at much higher performance (everything local) and with greater functionality (since it still works if you're not on the network). Much to our pleasure that's exactly what Citrix concluded as well.

Citrix brings strong assets to the effort because of their acquisition of XenSource and close relationship with the OpenSource Xen hypervisor project. Citrix reasonably argues that a PC hypervisor and a server hypervisor aren't the same beast. The Xen hypervisor that Citrix will use here is designed to give direct control of some PC hardware to a virtual machine. In a virtualized data center the primary I/O is to the network and to storage, both of which must be kept secure and controlled, so giving direct access to hardware has limited practical benefit. On a PC the issues are very different. Giving direct access to graphics hardware (especially given interfaces such as Microsoft's DirectX) has very high benefit in terms of graphical and interactive performance, and essentially no risk. Citrix also argues that Xen was designed with much more attention to the secure isolation of the different VM's, something that wasn't as important on the server. In a virtualized data center there are still strong controls on what software will be run because it runs inside the network and with direct access to sensitive data. On a PC, again the situation is very different, since a clear goal is to be able to run riskier software sometimes, and a separate virtual machine is a great way to do that as long as the hypervisor protection is strong (alternatively it's a great way to run sensitive and secure software like business applications with protection). So Citrix' claim that there are a lot of different choices in a PC hypervisor has good support.

To do desktop virtualization directly on the PC requires all the mechanism needed to do it on a server (for example the image synthesis and management tools already in XenDesktop and the competitors) and then some. On the PC you also need to keep all the virtual machine images encrypted and secure, you need a way to update them as soon as possible and you need to put a little more mechanism down on the PC. But the investments and tools needed to do PC virtualization on a server all translate nicely when you run a managed VM directly on the PC.

So where, you might ask, does Intel fit in? The partnership with Intel is how Citrix is building bridges to the PC OEM's so that enterprise customers will be able to buy PC's with the hypervisor preinstalled under the normal software load. Citrix is happy to make that hypervisor broadly and cheaply used for all purposes including ones that might be viewed as competitive with Citrix' own efforts —  the more PC's with bare metal hypervisors the better. It's also worth noting that Intel has been a strong supporter of hypervisor developments and a key contributor to the Xen project from the beginning.

And how does Microsoft fit in you might ask? Although MS has hypervisor technology they have no public plan to ship a client hypervisor. Since the assumption must be that the hypervisor is essentially free to the PC user, having a client hypervisor would be important to MS if not having one diminished their ability to sell Windows licenses, or if a competitive hypervisor threatened their ability to control the O/S stack. But neither seems to apply to Citrix, a long time business partner and a technical partner on MS' own Hyper-V efforts. Microsoft too has been a Xen supporter because it weakens the proprietary control of VMware.

The interesting open question is where and how VMware will weigh in. They have discussed similar plans in a similar late 2009 timeframe. They haven't yet announced a partnership with Intel but that wouldn't come as a surprise. The open questions are what kind of hypervisor they deliver and how open and inexpensive its use is.