17 March 2008
by Billy MacInnes
Citrix has broadened the channel for the XenServer product it acquired with the purchase of XenSource in August last year by making it available to three more distributors. The firm is seeking to attract more resellers with a web-based programme of technical and sales training.
The addition of Citrix distributors DNS, IQ-Sys and SCH to the previous XenSource distribution tier of ComputerLinks and Data Solutions reflects Citrix’s intent to compete with server virtualisation leader VMware.
Since November last year, Citrix claims to have increased the XenServer reseller base from 30 to 132 in the UK. Roger Baskerville, regional director for server virtualisation, northern Europe, at Citrix, said it hopes to sign as many as 250 resellers by the year end.
Baskerville suggested the training would appeal to resellers beyond the Citrix base. "We’ve made the training as attractive as possible to make sure they can very easily get on board from a sales and technical perspective," he said.
Baskerville said there had been interest from the channel in certification and selling the Citrix virtualisation product range because many resellers wanted to sell the message of an end-to-end strategy that covered the desktop, applications and servers rather than only server virtualisation.
The firm’s links with Microsoft would also stand it in good stead as the majority of potential customers would be seeking to virtualise Windows, Baskerville said.
