Two Microsoft partners, Citrix and XenSource, have tied the knot. Microsoft should be ecstatic…or should it?

Microsoft and Citrix have had a long and winding relationship, since 1997, when Citrix licensed its Multiple Windows technology to Microsoft. Citrix, for its part, got rights to the Windows Server source code and a joint-product deployment agreement — plus an estimated $185 million. In the ensuing years, there was talk that Microsoft would end up competitng with and killing off Citrix, interspersed with talk of secret payments made by Microsoft to keep Citrix afloat (which Citrix has denied, by the way).

Microsoft and XenSource are newer partners. The two signed a pact in July 2006 to cooperate on technology that would provide interoperability between Linux systems running the Xen hypervisor and Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Server Virtualization hypervisor (codenamed “Viridian”).

But the marriage of its two buddies isn’t sitting well with Microsoft, according to Citrix and terminal-services expert Brian Madden.

“(E)verything that I’ve heard is that Microsoft is not happy about this. Again, now Citrix is going head-to-head with Microsoft in this market,” Madden blogged.

A week ago, Madden blogged about the likelihood of Citrix buying XenSource. He noted that it would make a lot of sense for Citrix to own a hypervisor, given the growing likelihood that delivering users’ desktops virtually will become the order of the day in the not-too-distant future.

Read the rest of this very interesting post (and Brian Madden's commentary) at:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=646&tag=nl.e539