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Status of Creedence
// Latest blog entries
Over the past few weeks, and particularly as part of the Creedence World Tour, I've been getting questions about precisely when Creedence will be released. To the best of my ability, I've tried to take those questions head on, but the reality is we haven't been transparent about what happens when we release XenServer, and that's part of the problem. I'm going to try and address some of that in this post.
Now before I get into too much detail, it's important to note that XenServer is a packaged product which Citrix sells, and which is also available freely as open source. Citrix is a public company, so there is often a ton more detail I have, but which isn't appropriate for public disclosure. A perfect case in point is the release date. Since conceivably someone could change a PO based on this information, disclosing that can impact revenue and, well, I like my pay-cheque so I hope you understand when I'm quiet on some things.
So back to the question of what happens during finalization of a release, and how that can create a void. The first thing we do is take a look at all the defects coming in from all sources; with bugs.xenserver.org being one of many. We look at the nature of any open issues and determine what the potential for us to have a bad release from them. Next we create internal training to be delivered to the product support teams. These two tasks typically occur with either a final beta, or first release candidate. Concurrent to much of this work is finalization of documentation, and defining the performance envelope of the release. With each release, we have a "configuration limits" document, and the contents of that document represent both what Citrix is willing to deliver support on and what constitutes the limits of a stable XenServer configuration. For practical purposes, many of you have pushed Creedence in some way beyond what we might be comfortable defining as a "long term stable configuration", so its entirely possible the final performance could differ from what you've experienced so far.
Those are the technical bits behind the release, but this is also something which needs to be sold and that means we need to prepare for that as well. In the context of XenServer, selling means both why XenServer is great with XenDesktop, but also why it's great for anyone who is tired of paying more for their core virtualization requirements than really necessary. Given how many areas of data center operations XenServer touches, and the magnitude of the changes in Creedence, getting this right is critical. Then of course there is all the marketing collateral, and you get a sense of how much work is involved in getting XenServer out the door.
Of course, it can be argued that much of this "readiness" stuff could be handled in parallel, and for another project you'd be right. The reality is XenServer has had its share of releases which should've had a bit more bake time. I hope you agree with me that Creedence is better because we haven't rushed it, and that with Creedence we have a solid platform upon which to build. So with that in mind, I'll leave you with it hopefully being obvious that we intend to make a big splash with Creedence. Such a splash can't occur if we release during a typical IT lockdown period, and will need a bit larger stage than the one I'm currently on.
So stay tuned, my friends. Good things are coming ;)
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