OStatic

Although several open source virtualization applications exist, and some proprietary players are taking a bruising, it's still common for businesses deploying virtualization to face vendor lock-down and inability to move their application workloads between environments. However, Citrix, which owns XenSource and is behind the Xen project, has just announced a novel spin on the problem, to arrive in a preview version in September. The company's Project Kensho will distribute open tools for deploying virtualized application workloads. Applications will be runnable under the Open Virtual Machine (OVF) format, and IT managers and others will be able to run them across Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMWare ESX virtual environments.

β€œXenServer delivers the benefits of fast, free, ubiquitous and compatible virtualization, whether from Citrix, Microsoft or VMware,” said Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix, in a statement.Β  β€œProject Kensho highlights the Citrix commitment to interoperability for virtualization, while maximizing price/performance and richness of features at the virtual infrastructure level.”

The open OVF format was originally created by Citrix and VMWare, although several hardware companies and Microsoft participated. In a recent post I did on the threats that operating systems embedding virtualization and open source represent for proprietary virtualization players, I argued that users are coming to expect virtualization for free. Within OpenSolaris and Microsoft's Windows Server, businesses are getting it free, and many will not want to be tied to just one environment for virtualized applications.

Citrix's move looks like a smart one, and will open up choices for many businesses. My question, though, is why is Sun missing from this announcement? It would be good to see all of the major virtualization application providers work together, especially for the benefit of data centers running heterogenous environments. Maybe there will be more news on that front between now and September, when Project Kensho arrives as a preview.

• XenSource
• Xen
• Microsoft
• Citrix