Citrix has announced that it will buy VMLogix as part of a larger push to offer more self-service tools and address concerns like vendor lock-in facing enterprises using the cloud.
VMLogix is a provider of virtualisation automation and management technologies. Citrix expects to include some of the technologies from VMLogix in its next free XenServer release, which will allow enterprise users to set up virtual services on internal computing resources in the same way they do on public clouds. Typically, public cloud providers let users order up compute services online and start using them immediately.
Citrix will also add technology from VMLogix to its Citrix OpenCloud platform so that its public-cloud-provider customers can offer lifecycle management capabilities like quality assurance and business continuity.
Citrix also plans to add new capabilities to OpenCloud that will let enterprise customers manage a mix of public and private cloud workloads from a single management console, even if they use services from different cloud providers.
Finally, Citrix said it will add virtual switching capabilities to OpenCloud using Open vSwitch, an open-source virtual switch that supports the OpenFlow protocol. The idea is to make it easier for cloud providers to build isolated multitenant clouds while offering dynamic policies.