Citrix and HP team up on virtualisation

Firms claim virtual and physical can be managed as one

Remote access firm Citrix has teamed up with HP to integrate an enhanced version of Citrix XenServer into 64-bit HP ProLiant servers.

The companies have jointly developed an integrated server virtualisation system, called Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition, which will be marketed to HP and Citrix customers.

"Citrix and HP share the belief that virtualisation should be a natural extension of the hardware platform," said Peter Levine, senior vice president and general manager of virtualisation and management at Citrix.

One of the major features of the collaboration is the integration of the virtualisation management software into HP Insight Control which customers already use to physically administer HP servers.

Both companies hope that this tight coupling of the two systems will make it easier and faster to deploy and manage a virtualised environment.

Server virtualisation is being heralded by many as a way to help combat rising power costs and complex data centre footprints.

By teaming up, Citrix and HP aim to offer an improved user experience, simplifying the adoption of virtualisation and significantly reducing the time to achieve return on investment.

"Enabling virtualisation to be simple from the very beginning not only helps proliferate virtualisation technology, but enables enterprises to adopt it faster and easier," said Mark Bowker, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition will be available and supported worldwide from HP on 31 March 2008.