Ever since the Citrix announcement of making Enterprise XenServer free last month there has been a lot of speculation regarding the impact of the move.

Based on an informal Poll on Linkedin http://polls.linkedin.com/p/25594/srwir and the comments it's generating it does appear that there will be an impact especially with new adopters to Virtualization. As noted by the comments below there are also many IT shops that are willing to evaluate XenServer and some willing to switch from VMware.

1. Making XenServer free will encourage more customers to check out their options and apply more scrutiny to the value proposition of their alternatives.

   By Al GrandvilleProduct Management Professional
2. I believe there would be more folks kicking the tires if XenServer ran on a 32-bit system. I know we would!

   By Joe GillandNetwork Manager at Trevecca Nazarene University

3. Citrix has reached out to the "non-customers" and given them a way to get in the virtualization game. The value innovation that Citrix has embarked upon with this release of free XenServer is a move in the right direction. Let's drive the value up the chain and get it off the hypervisor. Let's look at the innovation aspect of this for a minute. Value innovation flies in the face of one of the most common principles of competitive strategy today: the value-cost trade-off. Companies have for years - and still do for that matter - thought that they can create more value for customers at a higher cost or create average value at a lower cost. This is really just a choice between costs and differentiation for the customer. I see Citrix pursuing both simultaneously. They have reduced the cost of enterprise-level virtualization and differentiated themselves by including features and functionality that the others can't or haven't.Kudos Citrix!!!

   By Michael KeenTechnologist, Business Technology Strategist, Speaker, Writer
4. I think it is a positive move, esp. since both VMware and MSFT now offer free hypervisors. But they have to make it easier to obtain, and also understand how to deploy it. I ran into all sorts of problems trying to download it from the Web site, and it wasn't clear what the hardware requirements were either. For people new to this game, it has to be easier, more than just a $0 price tag.

   By David Stromfreelance writer, Web site content maven, podcaster, blogger, and speaker: david@strom.com
5. I already have had several large customers of mine decide to move from VMWare to Xen Enterprise as a result of the changes in price/licensing.

   By Justin RuddySystems Engineer at Accelera Solutions
6. I am seeing a swing from people moving from the free VMware or VMware starter to XenServer - and SMB's signing virtualization proposals is encouraging.

   By Joe TursoSmall Business Community Specialist
8. I think it's a good move. It allows people like me who are new to virtualization to "try it before we buy" and also to gain experience before we recommend customers to buy it.

   By Niklas BivaldWebdeveloper at Happyplace
9. Hopefully customers will take the time to run XenApp on XenServer and see how it out performs VMWare and Hyper-V based on the work Citrix did to make XenServer increase performance with XenApp.

   By Shawn TooleyPrinciple Consultant, Author, Trainer

Plus more comments from the Citrix Virtualization Group on Linkedin

1. Edwin Houben

   Senior Consultant at Ictivity

   Nobody knows. But it wil have impact on the smaller and middle large companies. Further it will also have impact in large SBC environments. Why install it all on physical when you can virtualise it with XenServer that has a 40% better performance for terminal server and XenApp then VMware. So less hardware, less costs, less overhead...." Greent IT". Just give it a name.
   My guess is that it is one of the best moves Citrix ever did.

2. Dave Fiske

   Senior Consultant at MetaFiske Consulting

   I love it. I've been using XenServer Express for about a year and couldn't justify the added cost for Enterprise to my company powers that be. Now I'm consulting and it's an easy license key upgrade for my clients and they can almost instantly take advantage of XenMotion, after creating the resource pools and migrating the VM's to them. I've met Mark Templeton a couple times and he told me that XenSource was the best acquistion he's ever done.

3. Justin Elze

   Systems Engineer at IEvolve Inc

   Its great this will allow SMBs to jump into the virtualization world and have full enterprise feature set. This could help with a lot of companies green initiatives also...

   but from rom another perspective.....I know many companies who are very unhappy seeing they just spent a good amount of money on XenServer licenses at the end of 2008. Now Citrix is offering to make it up by giving them features they won't use....

4. Joe Turso

   Small Business Community Specialist

   As an SMB IT consultant, I think it opens the door to a lot of opportunities for virtualization that could not be cost justified before for small customers. I have been on the XenServer bandwagon since Oct 07 and it gets better every quarter. Now if we could only get the storage vendors to get inline with price and features.... :)

5. Eric Horowitz

   Enterprise Account Executive at New Horizons

   As a Citrix Authorized Learning Center we expect this to speed up the deployment. We have some local South Florida companies planning on moving to a Citrix Virtualization platform immediately. We will begin training delivery of CXS-200-1I Implementing Citrix XenServer Eneterprise Ed. 5.0 and CPV 200-1 Citrix Provisioning Server in Q-2 of this year.

6. Chris Fricke

   IT Administrator Sr at Clackamas County

   After the destruction of my budget for next year, this move by Citrix has saved my XenApp on XenServer pilot project. I may still have to wait a year to implement it fully but at least I can showcase the technology without spending money I don't have :)

7. Vicente Alonso

   Owner, Econocompu S.A.

   This move will really close the gap for implementing testing and production servers in the datacenter