Software giant Citrix has introducd a new project, ‘Open Door’, which aims to make it easier for enterprise customers to switch servers from VMware ESX or vSphere to Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
Citrix Open Door offers advanced virtualisation management along with free support, training and conversion tools to make the transition as simple as possible.
Over the past 30 days, the number of large enterprise customers activating XenServer for production use has more than doubled and now represents 20pc of the Global Fortune 500.
With more than 70pc of enterprise customers using multiple hypervisors in production1, demand for Citrix XenServer and Hyper-V virtualisation platforms continues to grow.
“XenServer and Hyper-V are clearly the fastest-growing virtualisation platforms in the industry today, each appealing to a different set of users,” said Louis Shipley, group vice-president and general manager, XenServer Product Group at Citrix.
“With the price of virtualisation continuing to rise from other vendors, more and more enterprise customers are switching a portion of their production servers to the Citrix and Microsoft virtualisation platforms.
“Project Open Door helps these customers achieve more agile data centers by offering them advanced virtualisation management through our Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V solution, as well as assistance in making the transition smooth, easy and cost-effective. With more virtualisation choices than ever, we encourage customers to shop around and make the right choice for their environment,” Shipley added.
Project Open Door helps ensure customers looking to expand their data centres with XenServer or Hyper-V have a smooth transition. Through March 2010, customers who switch existing VMware servers to XenServer or Hyper-V, and add Citrix Essentials for advanced virtualisation management, will receive additional technical support, training and conversion tools from Citrix at no cost.
By John Kennedy