When Citrix first acquired XenSource it wasn't immediately obvious how the company's NetScaler line of application accelerators was going to be relevant to the deal.
But this week Citrix took some folks by surprise with the announcement of a new MPX line of accelerators that leverages virtualization technology to allow the MPX devices to dynamically provision the server assets in the data center based on the traffic demands that the application accelerator sees on the network.
In effect, Citrix has stolen a march on Cisco's evolving data center strategy be leveraging XenSource software to allow networking devices to manage the rest of the data center. As virtualization continues to evolve it is becoming clearer that the convergence of networking, server and storage assets is going to happen a lot faster than previously thought.
This will present some management challenges for senior IT people as fewer IT people are required to manage a broader array of devices. The immediate upside is lower labor costs but in the short term there is likely to be some political jockeying for control between the networking, server and storage camps.
On the vendor side this may ultimately lead to some previously inconceivable mergers. After all, many thought Citrix was a dark horse to acquire a virtualization company such as XenSource. And how all this plays out over the next two years may actually define the next wave of enterprise computing for years to come.