Citrix Systems has announced it has completed the acquisition of XenSource, a privately held enterprise virtualization software vendor.
The purchase price for the transaction was approximately US$500 million payable in a combination of cash and Citrix common stock and comes two months after the acquisition was first announced. Citrix sees the move into the server and desktop virtualization markets through XenSource as complementary to its existing application virtualization offerings.
Citrix expects the virtualization market to grow to nearly $5 billion over the next four years.
“By acquiring XenSource, Citrix is now the only company to offer organizations an end-to-end application delivery infrastructure that leverages the method of application, desktop and server virtualization best suited for the dynamic delivery of applications to any user,” according to the company. The XenSource team and products will now form the core of the new virtualization and management division of Citrix led by XenSource CEO Peter Levine, who will report to Citrix president and CEO Mark Templeton.
Citrix also announced two new product lines. The Xen server virtualization engine has been rebranded to Citrix XenServer. The new product line ranges from Citrix XenServer Express Edition, a single-server solution available for free download, to the Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition, formerly XenEnterprise.
The second is Citrix’s entrance into the desktop virtualization space with Citrix XenDesktop due to ship in the first half of 2008.
