Citrix will offer free XenServer, reports say

On Wednesday it appeared that Citrix was about to declare that it was offering its flagship virtualisation software, XenServer, for free, a move that might immediately revitalise the company’s presence in the virtualisation market.

Citrix said on Thursday that they would be making an announcement about XensServer but would not give any details. The story was, however, broken by a website, Practical Technology, which gave some details about Citrix’s plans.

Citrix is competing with Microsoft and VMware, the two companies leading the market. Citrix has a long standing relationship with Microsoft and now, according to Wednesday’s blog post the companies are now allying with virtualisation.

But according to the blog post, Citrix will not make XenServer open source. At the moment XenServer costs $600 (£416) per server for an annual license and $900 per server for a perpetual license.