14 DAY TRIAL // Project Encore is yet another illustrative example of solution providers adapting their products to heterogeneous environments, and customers depending on mixed source IT infrastructures. A Citrix initiative, Project Encore is designed to enhance Microsoft Hyper-V. The promise is that Citrix Essentials take the virtualization management capabilities of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to the next level. “Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V will enable Microsoft customers to obtain even more value from their investments in the Windows platform and Microsoft virtualization solutions,” explained Mike Neil, general manager, virtualization strategy at Microsoft.
The two companies applauded Citrix Essentials as an expansion of their existing 20-year partnership. In this regard, the duo emphasized that Citrix Essentials not only extends the value of Hyper-V but also that of Microsoft System Center, aiming to deliver a boost in manageability, efficiency and scalability to virtualized environments.
Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V will start being available on April 7, 2009, through channel partners and will come with a price tag of $1,500 per physical server.
“We see Citrix Essentials as a powerful extension that enables customers to accelerate their Hyper-V adoption in the enterprise in much the same way Citrix XenApp has extended the Windows Server platform for nearly 20 years in the application delivery arena. Microsoft also will work to ensure that a future release of Microsoft System Center will support Citrix XenServer for customers with mixed Hyper-V and XenServer environments,” Neil added.
Available via Citrix and Microsoft resellers worldwide Essentials for Hyper-V will bring to the table a range of features including advanced storage integration using Citrix StorageLink technology, but also Dynamic Provisioning Services, hypervisor interoperability and Automated Lab Management. Frank Artale, group vice president, worldwide business development, revealed that Essentials is designed to further add value on top of Windows, following past initiatives from both Citrix and Microsoft.
“Our partnership on the client side has improved desktop computing for 200,000 companies and more than 100 million end users worldwide. We are excited to officially extend this partnership into the server virtualization arena today, opening the next chapter in one of the most successful partnerships in industry history,” Artale explained.