06.10.09
Is Microsoft Pulling a Xen on Vyatta?
Hopefully not.
Summary: Shades of Xen/Ignition Partners/Citrix maneouver in Vyatta’s round of funding
AS a quick recap, Microsoft employees in Ignition Partners had put money in XenSource and put it on route to acquisition by Microsoft’s other half, Citrix. As a result, Xen’s future on GNU/Linux became uncertain, Red Hat bought KVM, and Xen was used mostly to promote Windows and Microsoft, so the Linux Foundation abandoned it.
Having identified such patterns before, it’s not so encouraging to hear that Vyatta is now borrowing money (in a sense) from Citrix.
Open Source Networker Vyatta Raises $11 Million, Led By Citrix
Today, the company has announced that it has raised $10 million in Series C funding, led by Citrix.
Why would Citrix, a company that is all about Windows, be interested in routers running GNU/Linux? This gives Microsoft — through Citrix — a lot of leverage power.
For some background, appended below are some of the more recent stories about Vyatta and what it’s all about. █
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[1] Vyatta Open Source Routing and Security Software
It has been a very long time since I had the chance to speak with someone from Vyatta about their open source routing and network virtualization technology. After rummaging through my files, it seems that the last time I spoke with them was in June 2007 (see Vyatta – changing the world of routers, firewalls and VPNs.) They’ve been on my mind ever since and I’ve often spoken about their approach and their technology to Kusnetzky Group LLC clients.
[2] Vyatta – a fortnight in review
Well this is really simple, its managment interface (not the WebGUI) its awesome, some of our guys are cisco nuts, vyatta manages to deal with those guys – I have yet to dig into it too much but vyatta seem to have replaced bash with their own shell. The upshot of this ? you can type “configure” and it takes you into config mode like a cisco, it then will autocomplete router style commands like “run show bpg summary” its very clever – to really understand what i mean here try it.
Belmont, Calif.-based open source router maker Vyatta has issued a flurry of press releases since the start of the year. The most significant news was the most recent: the release of its Community Edition 4.
[4] Vyatta: A high-end Linux-based firewall and router
Let’s play a Linux word association game. Red Hat is to Microsoft as Vyatta is to Cisco.
[5] Free x86 Linux router distro rev’d
Vyatta Community Edition 2.2 (“Camarillo”) features security and flexibility enhancements to the BGP (border gateway protocol) stack, and usability enhancements related to NAT (network address translation) and DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol).
[6] Enterprise router runs open Linux OS
Vyatta has spun a branded hardware “appliance” version of its dual-licensed Linux and open source software-based router and firewall stack. The first in a “Series 2500″ line of “Open Networking Appliances,” the Vyatta 2501 targets data centers requiring up to 10Gbps of throughput.
[7] Vyatta Enterprise Router Runs Linux
Vyatta has bundled its dual-licensed Linux and open source software-based router and firewall software into a branded hardware “appliance” version for the enterprise market.
[8] Vyatta gives Nortel the half-Nelson
Nortel became dependent on phone companies, outfits like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. After DWDM brought the benefits of Moore’s Law to fiber, these companies stopped buying. And they’re still not buying.
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Roy Schestowitz said,
June 10, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Might be of interest in the future:
“Technical solutions aside – the fact that Citrix is now a key investor in Vyatta also raises the question of whether Citrix might just acquire Vyatta outright. It would give Citrix a more complete end-to-end stack against competitors like Cisco and provide differentiation against Blue Coat.”
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/06/open-source-vyatta-raises-10-m.html
Alex said,
June 12, 2009 at 8:34 am
Vyatta is not the only open routing solution. For a high level comparison between some available open source routing alternatives have a look at http://www.langabe.org/2009/06/open-source-routing.html