Citrix says it's back as a mainstream server virtualization player that won't send scary bills

But also claims XenServer 9 is great in the DaaS niche it retreated to a decade back

Citrix says it has returned to the mainstream server virtualization market with the release of XenServer 9.The hypervisor was a contender in the early 2010s but struggled to compete with VMware and Microsoft. By 2014, analyst firm Gartner suggested Citrix had stopped trying to compete for workloads other than its own desktop virtualization and network security products.Citrix kept the product alive without much fanfare for years and rebranded it Citrix Hypervisor. After a pair of private equity firms acquired Citrix in 2022 and folded it into an outfit called Cloud Software Group (CSG), XenServer became the name of both the product and a CSG business unit that announced its intention to return to the mainstream virtualization market. XenServer didn't do much as a standalone entity other than to create a trial three-host version of its product to show off its smarts and tease more profound offerings.

Last week, XenServer used its LinkedIn presence to reveal that XenServer is "back under the Citrix umbrella." The Register's virtualization desk understands that was effectively an announcement that XenServer as a business unit is no more.