VMware memo: Microsoft cutting out Citrix

VMware is trying to drive a wedge between Microsoft and Citrix Systems, according to virtualization.info.

The site says it has obtained a memo that VMware sent to its sales channel last week, on the same day Microsoft hyped its virtualization push in a press release. The memo gives these instructions to salespeople whose potential customers are considering Citrix: “Tell (them) that MSFT will soon cut Citrix out of the loop … and Citrix is allowing it to happen.”

 The memo also downplays Microsoft’s news as “a desperate attempt to make it look like (Microsoft) had a new, coherent vision and strategy for virtualization.”

Microsoft and Citrix are longtime virtualization partners, but VMware is using Microsoft’s own advances in the market to argue that the two companies are also becoming bigger competitors with each other — despite their recently announced plan to develop interoperability between Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008. As Microsoft prepares to launch Windows Server 2008 — featuring the Hyper-V hypervisor — next month, the battle for VMware’s server virtualization market share lead should grow even more intense.