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Home > Data Center Management News > Citrix entices VMware users to switch with free training and support |
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Virtualisation vendor Citrix Systems is offering the incentives through its Project Open Door campaign, which is aimed at customers who are making the move from existing VMware servers to XenServer and Hyper-V platforms. John Humphreys, senior director of product marketing for the Virtualisation and Management division at Citrix, said customers who decommission five or more VMware vSphere 4 or VI3 servers and replaced them with XenServer or Hyper-V plus the Citrix Essentials management software receive a free five incident support pack (5 by 8 hours) for every five servers converted, a voucher for six hours of online training for every five servers converted and free migration tools for transferring virtual machines.
Humphreys said Citrix's Project Open Door ...
coincides with concerns over vSphere Enterprise's short life span. Released in May, vSphere Enterprise will be end-of-life as of April 2010 (originally January 2010). For users that already have DRS/DPM and Storage VMotion that leaves two options – having to upgrade to Enterprise Plus for an estimated $700 (£425) or downgrade to Advanced and lose features that have previously been paying for. "End users were angry at this and many are making the switch because of the stability of Citrix's pricing and the fact that we work on the basis of no surprises," said Humphreys. Humphreys also brought to attention the fact that Citrix does not charge per socket for upgrades. VMware currently offers an upgrade promotion which allows companies to go from Enterprise to Enterprise Plus for $295 (£180) per socket. "More cores will continue to be added to processors, so having to paying for each socket will become costly," he said. Tom Norton, ICT development manager at Taunton School, said by decommissioning its VMware servers and replacing them with XenServer, the school has gained capacity to support more users on each server. According to Norton this has eased the management of the system. Michael Gilbert, director for IT divisional services at employment services firm Randstad Professionals, said the organisation switched to XenServer because of its 64-bit architecture. Gilbert said the company achieves high performance from this architecture, which in turn has provided savings through eliminating the need for additional hardware. Humphreys said those that qualify for the free training will receive it online: "The free training is for customers that are angry that they had to train their staff on VMware and have now found themselves having to go elsewhere – this way there are no more costs involved to get them up to date." However, Matt Piercy, regional director for Northern EMEA at VMware said the vendor is not aware of any customers who have switched from VI3 or vSphere to Citrix and that VMware channel partners have not come to the vendor with any issues. He said: "It is difficult to see the value of what Citrix is offering here; they are simply offering a small discount on tools that have been in their portfolio for a long time. There are no new features or benefits, and certainly nothing that VMware customers do not already do in production." Piercy said the level of support Citrix is offering is very restricted and is of the standard you would expect in a test and development environment, rather than for a production enterprise-class environment. "VMware is in the fortunate position of being market leader, so it is only natural that competitors will come after us," he added. |
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