Douglas Brown: A few months ago I wrote an article detailing how Citrix CEO's decision to buy XenSource was one of the greatest moves in IT history.  In that article I also threw out a teaser stating that I thought Microsoft would announce they would buy Citrix a day or two before VMware's VMworld conference.  Well, it is a few days before VMworld and I must admit I was starting to think I would have to write that there would be no deal and to eat a bit of crow, but today my inbox lit up with rumors.   I even heard the rumor on my favorite podcast, Tech 5 with John C.  Dvorak.   (Dvorak has been doing IT news for over 30 years, this guy does not report on silly rumors)

This being said, why do I believe this might be true and what are the rumors telling me?

• Citrix got rid of all their distributors expect for one, Ingram Micro -    Did Citrix make this move to set themselves up better for the Microsoft purchase?

• Citrix stopped spending money on advertising and marketing - Just over six months ago, when I first started hearing the rumors, Citrix was spending money like crazy on ads and marketing events but one day all that money dried up.  Why?  Is this because they were in the process of selling the company and they wanted to make the bottom line look as good as possible?  Or was it because they were trying to make their numbers due to the fact that XenServer sales were just NOT THERE?

• About the time Citrix stopped spending money on marketing they also closed up all their open job recs.  One day Citrix was hiring like mad and the next day all the jobs were gone.  Why?  Does it have to do with making sure they make their numbers or does it have to do with not needing a slew of new employees while they were working on selling the company? 

• This one is new. I was told that last week Citrix laid off 20-30 people.   All of the people laid off held business relationship jobs and I heard most of the IBM relationship team was let go.   Why is this?   Is it because Microsoft does not need them?   Lord knows, Microsoft and IBM are not fans and I would guess Citrix would not need an IBM relationship team if they were purchased by Microsoft.   

• Microsoft has cash and lots of it and is committed to spending it...    If Microsoft can't beat Google then maybe they want to make sure they are number one in the virtualization market.  If so, buying Citrix would be better than partnering with them and would definitely help in taking on VMware.   Maybe so but maybe not??

• Microsoft is calling Citrix's XenDesktop solution their own, "Microsoft VDI".   Last time I saw this, a company of amazing people with a great product called Softricity was picked up for 270 million!!  Microsoft is just not in the business of leaving money on the table.  This way they will with Citrix by giving Citrix the VDI market.

• VMware - - It is well known that Microsoft needs Citrix to compete against VMware.  Microsoft believes the future of virtualization is not in the hypervisor but in the management of the virtualization environment and Citrix brings a lot of experience to the table on how to manage remote applications and services.  Due to the XenSource acquisition, Citrix brings to the table a great team that can help pull this off. 

• This might be the most important reason and that is that companies like HP, IBM, and Cisco have been rumored to have been looking at buying Citrix and Microsoft would never let anyone else own their closest and best partner.   I believe this is the true reason behind this rumored acquisition.  Simply put, Microsoft has no choice...    They can't do it alone and they can't afford to lose Citrix to an HP or Cisco where they can't tell Citrix what to do.  We can all agree that Citrix, for the past ten plus years, has done anything and everything Microsoft wanted.  Would this be the same if Citrix was owned by IBM, HP or Cisco?  The answer is NO, and this is the biggest reason Microsoft would acquire Citrix.