Back in 2007, Citrix acquired XenSource for a reported $500 million. A lot of people at the time either thought that was lunacy or brilliance. I remember someone asking Doug Brown about what he thought of the purchase during Citrix iForum 2008. Doug didn’t skip a beat when he answered, “I think it is the best $500 million Citrix could have ever spent on marketing.” I can 100% agree with that statement because any time an article or news source mentions VMware, Citrix XenServer is mentioned too.

$500 million - that seems to be a shocking number. But, what has Microsoft spent on acquiring companies in the virtualization space? Brian Madden recently wrote an intriguing article speculating this question as well. Microsoft, has acquired companies like Kidaro, Calista, and Softricity. What was purchase price for these companies? That information doesn’t seem to be publicly available, but based on speculation it seems to be somewhere around that $500 million mark as well.

Let’s not also forget about VMware purchasing application virtualization vendor ThinStall (now ThinApp), and Oracle purchasing/destroying Virtual Iron. I guess the bottom line is vendors definitely see the virtualization battle and everyone is trying to win the war.

Technorati : Calista, Citrix, Kidaro, Microsoft, Softricity, VMware
Del.icio.us : Calista, Citrix, Kidaro, Microsoft, Softricity, VMware