A week ago virtualization.info introduces a new comment system powered by Disqus.
It has a number of features we were really keen to offer: it allows our readers to log-in with their Facebook, Twitter or OpenID profile, it allows threaded conversation (and subscription to them by email and RSS), it allows to vote and flag for review comments, etc.
It even exposes a trackback URL so that our readers know which websites are continuing the discussion started here.
There’s no way to know if this new system helped or if it’s just because of the articles we recently published, but for sure the number of comments we are receiving skyrocketed.
Some of the last ones are very interesting like one coming from Simon Crosby, CTO of Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix.
In our article titled Citrix joins The Linux Foundation, looking for a Xen-powered kernel?, Crosby answers to Jagane Sundar, founder of Thinsy, and exposes a very interesting information about the competition with VMware that we don’t think Citrix ever published:
…is certainly true that lots of folk have not made money out of Xen – that is, it has become a competitive tool rather than a profitability tool. That is, none of Red Hat or Novell or Oracle or Citrix with XenServer, charge for the base platform. However Citrix XenServer is 100% a revenue generator for Citrix. First, it represents approximately $300MM in lost revenue for VMware per year…
This is probably an esteem that Citrix made internally, considering the amount of XenServer installations that customers report. It remains a claim until there are some numbers and 3rd party verification.
Nonetheless it’s interesting to report because it gives a raw idea of how much Citrix may be disturbing the VMware activity.