ED hunts for XenSource partners

A month after signing up Express Data as its sole distributor, XenSource is now actively seeking resellers to take on its XenEnterprise virtualisation software platform.

XenEnterprise runs virtual machines on the one server. XenSource developed the product based on the industry’s open source Xen hypervisor; a free virtual machine monitor for x86, Intel Itanium and PowerPC architectures that allows multiple guest operating systems on the same computer hardware.

John Glendenning, XenSource vice president worldwide sales, said the product competes directly against proprietary virtualisation systems developed by VMWare – owned by EMC.

“This product will now offer resellers a choice in a market solely dominated by VMWare,” he claimed.

With the help of Express Data, XenSource plans to take on no more than ten resellers, said Glendenning.

“We want to be careful not to saturate the market and I think 10 is a well- rounded number. We have already signed on five resellers we will name in the coming week,” he said.

The Xen-Enterprise product offers VARs a "pretty decent margin" he said.

Resellers can choose the types of services around their customers and can offer them anything from virtualisation-managed services to specific services.

XenSource has a channel program that is not a tiered system. Glendenning said the vendor wants to make sure it doesn’t "frustrate any partners" with a program forcing them to jump through many ".

“Our resellers would provide first and second level support to the end-users. Third level VARs providing engineering support- will receive leads from us,” said Glendenning.

A requirement of all resellers who apply to become a VAR is they have to send one engineer on a full day training course run by Express Data, he said.

XenSource has managed to wrangle the support of proprietary software giant Microsoft. It signed a collaborative development agreement with the vendor in July to create interoperability between Xen and Longhorn Microsoft’s next server operating system, Microsoft will also support Windows running on XenEnterprise.

The vendor is also popular with component makers Intel and AMD, both releasing processors which have been modified to run Xen. Citrix and HP are also XenSource supporters.