Following fast on the heals of VMWare's successful IPO earlier in the week, Citrix has announced the acquisition of XenSource for a cool $500 million. Considering that XenSource is less than three years old and has around $1 million in revenues, this is a staggering amount. But it shows that open source is a significant disruptor. My guess is that not only will XenSource generate enough payback for Citrix in the Following fast on the heals of VMWare’s successful IPO earlier in the week, Citrix has announced the acquisition of XenSource for a cool $500 million. Considering that XenSource is less than three years old and has around $1 million in revenues, this is a staggering amount. But it shows that open source is a significant disruptor. My guess is that not only will XenSource generate enough payback for Citrix in the next few years but it enables Citrix to drive a new revenue stream that could take on Red Hat or even Microsoft. I hope that Citrix lets XenSource run as an independent division, much like EMC ran VMWare, so that thaty can guide their own destiny while leveraging the sales operations and channels that Citrix has developed. Pretty exciting for both companies. Open Source