Earlier this week SearchServerVirtualization.com reported that in the first quarter of 2009 Citrix will deliver support for Microsoft’s Hyper-V in XenServer Enterprise Edition.  This new product will reportedly be named “Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V”.

Features likely to be included are support for live migration and resource pools. That sounds pretty exciting because Microsoft isn’t expected to ship those features until 2010.

Although, Lou Shipley, the group vice president of Citrix’s XenServer unit, the Management Systems Group, was quoted, this looks alot more like a teaser than a formal product announcement.  I couldn’t find any related information or a press release on Citrix’s web site to substantiate the announcement.  This dearth of information leave lots of room for speculation and lots of room for questions.  The first question that came to my mind was, “What does Citrix hope to gain by showing their hand so early?” I doubt that Citrix thinks customers will delay purchasing VMware products until those customers have had an opportunity to evaluate what the XenServer/Hyper-V combo can do.  Nor do I think that Citrix expects more customers will purchase Hyper-V just because of the promise of better management in the future.  My guess is that Citrix wants to accomplish two things: 1) demonstrate their value as a partner to Microsoft, e.g. “count on us to help you compete with VMware”, and 2) create market buzz so people will investigate their XenServer product offering.

Demonstrating partner value and creating market buzz are valuable, but I have another question, “Will this announcement prevent Citrix from recognizing XenServer Enterprise Edition until they ship the promised capability?”  Depending on how conservative Citirx accountants are, there could be a downside in terms of revenue recognition.  So what, you may be asking, is revenue recognition?  In layman terms “revrec” pertains to accounting rules that define when a company can recognize revenue from software sales.  Revrec rules exist to prevent software companies from selling more software today (and inflating their income statements) by promising future features that won’t be delivered until a subsequent version ships.  Revrec rules say that a software company can’t recognize the revenue until the promised features are delivered.  Of course as with most accounting rules there is plenty of room for interpretation, and I am not an expert qualified to say whether or not Citrix should recognize revenue from XenServer Enterprise Edition software sales until the Hyper-V support actually ships.  But it makes me wonder if partner value and market buzz are worth the risk.

Citrix, Hyper-V, Virtual Product Management

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 4:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Virtual Product Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.