This week Microsoft and Citrix announced their plan to deliver a comprehensive set of virtualization solutions which will address the desktop and server virtualization needs of customers. For more information on this news read here and here.

Marathon’s Take

As of right now, there are a limited number of businesses who have implemented virtual environments because they are under the impression that they are too cost-prohibitive, far too complex and not resilient enough for the applications that you care about. It seemed for a while that the IT community was going to be stuck with a one-size-fits-all virtualization paradigm in the data center. Not so much now.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that the pace of innovation and adoption will accelerate - fueled this time around by the Microsoft and Citrix hypervisor and management interoperability alliance. It’s important to keep in mind that what’s good for the end-user community is good for the vendor and solution provider ecosystems. Platform interoperability that enables end-user choice will rule the day. The Microsoft and Citrix announcement is great for anyone considering virtualization where end-user choice matters. Stay tuned for more information from us on that front…