Citrix Access Essentials to become XenApp Fundamentals April 20, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Access Essentials, Fundamentals, XenApp
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Citrix is rebranding Citrix Access Essentials into:
- Citrix XenApp Fundamentals 3.0 for Windows 2008
- Citrix XenApp Fundamentals 2.0 for Windows 2003
The Fundamentals product will become full part of the XenApp family.
Citrix asks “What is a Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA)?” April 2, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, datacenter.Tags: Citrix, Licensing, Microsoft, virtualization, XenApp
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Microsoft has the best definition as they have been in this business for years now. They define a SPLA in the following way, “A licensing program that enables service providers and ISVs with a hosted offering to license Microsoft products on a monthly basis to provide services and hosted applications to their end customers.”
Some qualifying questions for entry into a SPLA program might be the following:
1. Do you provide software services and hosted apps on a rental, subscription or services basis?
2. Are you a hosting provider, an ASP, a SI or an ISV that provides software as a service?
3. Is one of your primary objectives to avoid up-front license fees and minimum commitments?
4. Is your goal to maximize the number of end-user served from the same underlying software?
5. Will your customers accept not owning the software or having it located at their site?
If you can answer YES to most of these questions then most likely a SPLA program would fit your business model.
According to Microsoft there are many benefits to using a SPLA. Because the license is subscription based over time it will often cost more than a perpetual license for the same software. However, the benefits far outweigh the cost if the business model is structured correctly.
The following is a list of benefits Microsoft uses for their SPLA program:
• No Upfront Costs
• Most Current Product Versions – You have access to the most current versions of the products available in the program
• Pay Based On Usage – Monthly usage-based cost means you pay only for what was made available the previous month
• Worldwide Distribution – Use Microsoft licensed products to sell your services in any part of the world
Please take a look here and vote!
Virtualization Olympics: Vendor bitchslapping event February 3, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: ESX, Hyper-V, XenApp, XenServer
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Following our post on December 19th last year on virtualizing XenApp on XenServer, VMware and Citrix are at it again. VMware recently posted an article on the performance of XenApp on ESX and XenApp on XenServer.
It may not be a suprise that the VMware findings were boldly in favor of ESX and not in favor XenServer. It would be one step to far in this world that vendors confirm that their product might not be a good a fit to virtualize a specific application. Following the VMware post, Simon Crobsy (CTO Citrix) took his pen and opened the virtualizing-olympics with the following statement and challenge:
So I’ve decided to issue an open challenge to VMware CTO Stephen Herrod: Steve, it’s time to rein in the monkeys behind the keyboard, end VMware’s indefensible EULA restrictions and allow independent performance comparisons of your products with others, by third parties with a vested interest in accuracy and independence.
Both posts resulted in a flood of responses of the virtualization-community, but there are some general correct remarks in all these responses from the community:
- Why virtualizing XenApp? It obviously performs better natively (even proven by the VMware tests)
- Benchmarking should be done by independent companies/organization like http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net (2 experience system engineers working with Citrix and VMware)
- Selecting a virtualization platform for your XenApp, if you decide to do so it is not only abou performance, decissions will aslo be influenced by investement in the virtualization layer, automation, management, …
One thing however keeps me wondering … why virtualizing everything? Todays server come (in most cases) with 2x 4 cores, offering 8 cores which enables you to provide XenApp to more than a decent number of users. When adding virtualization to the stack for sure you will lose some performance (wether it is hyper-v, xenserver or esx).
I strongly believe that for those users that haven chosen to work with XenApp as a strategy a minimum number of XenApp servers should be physically, use a virtualized XenApp as escape-mode when something goes wrong. Furthermore keep in mind that when it comes to automation you might require an automatic launch system to rollout new servers in second.
Perhaps both CTOs need to read a report released by Aberdeen today on the advantages of virtualization and what about business critical applications, a quote from a researcher: (full report)
“Even though organizations could experience significant cost savings from conducting virtualization projects, these benefits could diminish if they don’t have capabilities in place for effective management of application performance. One of the key challenges for these organizations is that the effective management of application performance in virtualized environments requires a set of capabilities and functionalities that were not required when these organizations were looking to achieve same performance goals in physical environments. Understanding what these capabilities are is making the difference between success and failure of virtualization projects as measured from business prospective,” said Bojan Simic, research analyst, Aberdeen.
VMware & Teradici threaten Citrix? January 26, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization, desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, VDM, virtualization, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer
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Tom Valovic posted an interesting article about an interview with Stuart Robinson of Teradici on the purported benefits of Teradici’s PC over IP protocol licensed by VMware. Tom reports on a Teradici claim that PC over IP has a lead over ICA in that it has an ability to dynamically adjust the bandwidth needed by the remoting protocol, in response to available network bandwidth. Specifically, Robinson (who actually knows better) claims that ICA has no such ability.
Is Offline VDI and the Client Hypervisor: Worth The Effort? January 22, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Application virtualization, desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, Hyper-V, Microsoft, VDI, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop
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Citrix has announced that they’ll be offering an alternative to traditional on-line VDI deployments (ala XenApp) in the form of a client hypervisor (Project Independence, posted yesterday). In essences, a client hypervisor allows a user to run a full-blown virtual machine on their desktop — basically a throw-back to running VMware Workstation/Player in the enterprise before we had all these fancy virtual platforms like Virtual Infrastructure and Hyper-V.
It allows users to work anywhere without concern about having an uplink. On planes, in coffee shops where there’s no Wifi or the connection is too small to reliably delivery a VDI experience. It also paves the way to true application virtualization, where the CPU-based hypervisor can be trimmed down to support running applications directly without the bloated guest operating system.
To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, Offline VDI and the Client Hypervisor: Worth The Effort?
Microsoft MED-V a quick overview … when APP-V, when MED-V? January 4, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization.Tags: App-V, MED-V, Terminal Services, ThinApp, XenApp
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As posted earlier in October last year, mystery remains around APP-V and MED-V of Microsoft. John Savill has released an easy to understand FAQ on MED-V
The highlights:
- Aimed at solving compatibility issues between applications that do not run correctly on a certain OS. User with VISTA can run an XP application within a MED-V environment locally (which means that an OS is required next to the local OS of the user)
- MED-V integrates within the local OS and builts further on Virtual PC and it nothing more than a local VM.
- It includes the necessary functionalities for image updates of the VM and iamge distribution
- Currently the roadmap only contains support for Vista and XP 32bit
- Availability is foreseen first half of 2009
If I look at it, MED-V is nothing more than a client-side virtualization approach next to APP-V. Furthermore it still means that all the apps run locally within a VM (see image). From a management perspective this gets really complicated.
- The local OS requires updates, patches, …
- Applications that are physically installed on the local OS requires updates, patches, …
- Applications that are virtually delivered through APP-V require updates, patches, …
- Applications running within MED-V require updates, patches, … as well as the OS.
Altough MED-V offers some nice features when looking at application compatibility issues it does not solve any issues of management, maintenance and for sure not on ROI and TCO. Instead it will increase the TCO. Also ‘imaging’ of all the applications might get hard
For those that have SA and have the possibility to get into MDOP another aspect remains when to use MED-V versus APP-V. In short APP-V virtualizes an application while MED-V virtualizes at OS level. John formulates as
“If your problem is that applications are incompatible with one another or you need to deploy apps quickly with minimal testing, you want APP-V. If you have applications that won’t run on a new client OS or you want to manage VM images then you want MED-V”
Personally I believe that it is better to look at it from a consolidation point of view. Try to centralize as much applications as possible on a server-side application virtualization solution such as Citrix XenApp or Windows Terminal Services. Those applications that are not multi-user, multi-session can be delivered to the user through a client-side application virtualization solution such as Citrix XenApp (Streaming), Microsoft APP-V or VMware ThinApp.
In those case that you are running a client locally which requires an older application that is not compatible with the current OS (for example a SAP report which is coded in an old application running on an even older OS) you might look at MED-V. Altough that rescripting the report might be also a good alternative.
The full articles by John Savill can be found here and here.
XenApp 5 – New feature-list November 18, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, XenApp, Special Folder Redirection;, EdgeSight, Password Manager, SmartAuditor, SmartAccess, Resource Manager
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More and more we receive the request to give more an indepth view on the features of XenApp 5, we are not that “feature-list-guys” but more the “solution-type-of-people”, but on general request here it comes:
Improvements, changes in “client-side application virtualization” next to the already available features in XenApp 4.5 (XA Enterprise & Platinum)
- Inter-isolation communication: when streaming an application to a device (f.e. Word) and another in another package (f.e. Exchange), you have the capacity to use Word as email-editor.
- Differential synchronization: uploading of only the changed files and removing outdated files
- HTTP and HTTPS streaming of applications
- ‘Special Folder Redirection’: alloes for automatic redirection of server-side special folders to the client side. When a user clicks on the Documents folder in their XenApp 5 session, the folder that opens will actually be the local Documents (or My Documents) folder. When SFR is used, all file operations such as opens and saves will take place in the client-side folder. For those that use multiple devices (for example home PC and business PC) SFR should not be enabled !!! Gabe Knuth has tested the solution in depth.
Improvement, changes in ‘printing’
- XPS printing is supported
- Printing localization: the session will automatically detect the closest printer
Report on Endpoint Virtualization … November 17, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization, desktop virtualization.Tags: App-V, Citrix, Provisioning Server, Symantec, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop
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Recently Symantec has commissioned a study on ‘Endpoint Virtualization’, finally the document is freely available. It has taken some time but here are the main results:
- More than a quarter (28 percent) of respondents said at least 40 percent of their organizations’ IT resources are spent on managing operating system and application delivery to endpoint devices
- 76 percent of respondents said their organizations have implemented some form of endpoint virtualization technology into their IT infrastructures
- 36 percent of respondents said at least a quarter (26 percent) of their entire 2009 IT budget is earmarked for endpoint virtualization initiatives
- 52% of those that have enabled endpoint virtualization, do this with Microsoft or Citrix
There are some ’strange’ results, 76% confirm that they are using endpoint virtualization, unfortunately it is completely unclear how this is divided over application virtualization (XenApp, WTS), application streaming (XenApp, ThinApp, App-V), Desktop Virtulization (XenDesktop, MS VDI, VMware VDM) or OS Streaming (Provisioning, …). It would have been nice if this information would also be made available, afterall, Microsoft and Citrix take 52% of the complete share for their account, but is that on XenApp or WTS or App-V or with Citrix Provisioning Server, completely unclear.
Furthermore Symantec pops up with an 8% marketshare (fourth place) after Microsoft, Citrix and VMware. Believing that Symantec has built-up a marketshare of that size in such a short time, only confirms our toughts, a more detailed division is required between:
- Server side application virtualization (XenApp, WTS)
- Client side application virtualization (XenApp, App-V, ThinApp, …)
- Desktop Virtualization
- OS Streaming
However, the report clearly indicates that virtualization is being adopted in all layers of the infrastructure. Recent studies have shown that approximately 14% of the x86 servers are virtualized according to Citrix.
Issues with printing in Citrix? … Citrix Print Detective November 13, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Data Center Management, Server Virtualization, desktop virtualization.Tags: printing, XenApp
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Kate Brew interviews Citrite Ola Nordstrom on ‘Securing XenApp’ November 10, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: XenApp
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Douglas Brown has interviewed Ola Nordstrom, a Citrite who has been securing XenApp for the last 5 years.
Some topics thare are covered in this interview:
- What is an ‘attack surface”
- What are examples of entry points
- Best practices
- …
Full podcast.
Applications compatible with Citrix XenApp ? November 4, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: XenApp, XenApp Ready
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Probably one of the most asked questions when it comes to application compatibility is “Will my application run smoothly on XenApp?”.
Citrix has released a llst of applications that have been tested on XenApp and made this available. In total 5.633 verifications have taken place by the community, of these 5.633 verification, Visionapp (the specialist in server-rollout) has contributed 4.200 verifications !
If you have an application that has not yet been certified van de community, Citrix offers you a “test kit” for testing the application. This kit is actually the Citrix Ready Test Kit, avalable here.
Looking for an official advise if your application is Citrix ready, check App-Dna.
Securing Citrix Web Interface? November 3, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Web Interface, XenApp, XenServer
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An interview with Andrew Innes has been published on the Citrix blog. Andrew is the Platform Architect for user interaction components of XenApp and XenDesktop, notably Web Interface and the desktop integration clients. His job entails finding creative ways to improve the usability and security of these products, and helping strike the right balance between them. The article focuses on securing Web Interface.
Full article on Citrix blog.
Citrix XenApp 5.0 – Techtalk October 10, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization.Tags: XenApp
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For those looking for a clear overview on what is new in XenApp 5.0, this post might come in handy.
Focussing on comparitive features, application streaming, web interface, clients, secure gateway …
Application Virtualization Comparison Chart – Sept 08 September 10, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: App-V, Appstream, Bufferzone, InstallFree, LanDesk, RingCube MojoPac, ThinApp, Trigence AE, XenApp
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Sven Huismans and Matthijs Haverink have released their ‘Applicationon Virtualization Comparison Chart. It compares Citrix XenApp, InstallFree Bridge, Microsoft App-V, Symantec Appstream with SVS, VMware Thinapp, Xenocode VAS
The following vendors didn’t make into the comparison: Ceedo, Endeavors Technologies Application Jukebox, LanDesk Application Virtualization, RingCube MojoPac, Trigence AE and Trustware Bufferzone.
Full report here.
XenApp 5.0 Migration Guide September 8, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: migration, XenApp
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Looking to migrate to Citrix XenApp 5.0 take a look at the migration matrix table, as there are a number of possibilities.
XenApp 5.0 – Comparitive Matrix September 8, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Citrix, XenApp
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With the imminent release of XenApp 5.0 it is time to compare the new version against the previous versions. The full comparitive matrix can be found here.
Moving into a dynamic datacenter? June 18, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: HP, iLO, PowerSmart for XenApp, XenApp
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If you are working on getting that fixed datacenter to become a dynamic datacenter (or a delivery center as Citrix prefers it), you should get a look at this video.
Citrix and HP are currently working on a system that preserves energy, which will boot servers as the load increases and which will turn-off servers when the load is lowering. Currently the utility is called Citrix PowerSmart for XenApp.
Windows scripting for Application Streaming in Citrix June 8, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Streaming, XenApp
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Apparently some users, wishes to use WSF as the installer for application streaming. Joe Nord (Product Architect at Citrix) just posted a solution on how to use WSF in appliation streaming.
What has happend with Softricity? June 7, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Branch Repeater, Kidaro, MDOP, Softricity, VECD, XenApp
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Since the take-over by Microsoft some things have changed:
- Pricing model has moved to a user-license model
- The SoftGrid for Windows Desktop client, was bundled into the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). Pricing was low, but you have to have a license that is still under SA. The same applies for those wishes to use VECD (VDI)
- The feature for application publishing and virtualization without streaming was added
The new 4.5 release available somewhere in Q2 or Q3 this year will have the following features:
- Bye bye Softricity as brand (Microsoft is also trying to move the name Softgrid out of the world)
- Hello System Center Microsoft Application Virtualization
- Inter container traffic (Dynamic Suite Composition)
- A streaming server for the branch-office
- Changes to VAS and the infrastructure
One thing is very strange, it is almost similar to Citrix.
- Rebranding, Citrix has also done
- Inter container traffice, Citrix has also done in Application Streaming
- Streaming server for the branchoffice: citrix has also done in collaboration with Microsoft: WANscaler branch repeater
You could almost start thinking that Citrix is advising Microsoft what to do with Softricity Softgrid … oeps sorry … System Center Microsoft Application Virtualization.
Furthermore Microsoft recently announced the take-over of Kidaro and the integration of the Kidaro solution into the MDOP in the 1st half of 2009 on which we blogged a while ago.
Virtual Apps in the virtual world of Second Life June 7, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Second Life, XenApp
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During the last Citrix Application Delivery in Australia three Citrites showed Virtual applications in SecondLife. How virtual can you go? Video here.
Printing in VDI … June 3, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: .Print Application Server Engine, .Print Desktop Engine, ThinPrint, XenApp, XenDesktop
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ThinPrint just confirmed its commitment to provide a high quality printing solution for the Citrix Delivery Center. The .Print Desktop Engine is the license you need for XenDesktop, .Print Application Server Engine is the one for XenApp.
It is clear that ht eprinting issues that there were in the past in SBC environments come again with the VDI solutions. You give the VDI a printjob and whats next? The printjob is locked into the VDI but it needs to get out on the other side. ThinPrint is a good solution as it compresses the printjob enormously this way providing bandwith for the ICA traffic.
Press announcement available at NewsWire.
Citrix XenApp 11.000 Beta … June 2, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: XenApp
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… is available for download here, remember it is not advised to put it in production !
REDFLY Mobile Companion is Citrix Ready May 30, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Redfly, XenApp
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Celio Corp., an innovator of seamless and efficient mobile solutions for the smartphone market, announced its REDFLY Mobile Companion has joined the Citrix Ready™ Program, and compatibility with Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure
This is one of the first steps towards the smart-phone market about which Mark Templeton was talking during last Synergy, Full article here.
Apollo 3D Graphics preview May 29, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Apollo, Citrix, XenApp, XenDesktop
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… Most customers’ graphics needs are already well met by SpeedScreen Progressive Display (a revolutionary technology introduced in XenApp Presentation Server 4.5 and also included in XenDesktop), working with large 3D graphics models often demands the added computational power of a graphics processing unit (GPU). Project Apollo follows in the footsteps of Project Pictor which developed the technology behind Citrix’s new Virtual Design Studio product for applications built on the popular OpenGL graphics API. …
Addition by Channelvirtualization – 02/06/08 ♦ Video about the architecture can be found here, the integration of Apollo in XenDesktop can be found here.
Slow logon to XenApp ? Citrix Fast Launch ! May 28, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Citrix Fast Launch, XenApp, XenDesktop
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Check the preview of Citrix Fast Launch here and the follow-up video here. Your apps on XenApp will now boot faster than your local applications ! Business Continuity at its best !
It will be a free utility, probably available from the CDN pages. If the utility will be available for XenDesktop is still unclear, we are awaiting input from Citrix.
Babya introduces application virtualization software May 23, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Babya, XenApp
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Babya Introduces Application Virtualization Software — Babya announced the upcoming release of Virtual Application Platinum. Babya Virtual Application Platinum is a software virtualization solution designed for applications-such as small utilities. It can handle the virtualization of multiple applications.
VMware behaves like a 2-year old child ?! May 22, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Citrix, Provisioning Server, ThinApp, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer
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VMware tries to kill XenDesktop on its release-day (article at Virtualization.info) :VMware sent a letter to its partners completely destroying the value of the Citrix solution. Among the other claims, VMware states that the product marketing message is misleading and confused the press, that the software is complex, poorly integrated and most of all built on a platform that has an uncertain future.
There is one thing that I do not get at all, everytime Citrix makes a strategic announcement or rebranding VMware follows with kindergarden-response.
- Citrix moves to XenServer, XenDesktop and XenApp, VMware suddenly decides that Thinstall is not a good name and rebrands it to Thinapp
VMware indicates that the Citrix solution is poorly integrated, yet Citrix has purchased companies that have been around in virtualization for over many years and integrated these company to offer a complete portofolio. Furthermore these companies have shown to be market-worthy.
- Citrix offers provisioning services for desktop OS & server OS under the name of Provisioning Server. This was the result of the acquisition of Ardence. Currently VMware can not offer the same flexibility with that little needed storage as Citrix Provisioning Server.
- Citrix offers paravirtualization services for servers under the XenServer brand. This was the result of the acquisition of XenSource, the open source company that actually had an important position in the XEN open source project, which still exists and to which Citrix often commits code.
Probably VMware is a little afraid of the joint-development that is taking place between Microsoft & Citrix, which will result into the possibility to move Hyper-V VMs to XenServer and vice versa. VMware is not invited to that party. Furthermore Microsoft employees often indicate that Citrix is the best party to work with when Microsoft solutions do not fit as Citrix is Microsofts’ largest ISV worldwide.
End-to-End Virtualization does not end with Server-, Desktop- or Application virtualization it also requires good network access (secured, f.e. Citrix Access Gateway), optimized traffic (Citrix Wanscaler), secured DMZs (Citrix Application Firewall).
Before I lower myself to a 2-year old kid, like VMware is currently doing, I am going to round of this post. Probably this fighting will go on for a while. But remember VMware is getting agressive into the following market: 7% of de servers in the world are virtualized and 0,01% of the desktops (a guess). That means that there is an open market of 192,99% and they behave as a 2-year old kid. What a shame for a public company. They should know better !
