From the 'Linux routers' files:

Vyatta, the feisty open source startup that is trying to take router market share from Cisco and Juniper - is getting an injection of $10 million today. The $10 million is Vyatta's 'C' round of financing and is led by Citrix Systems.

That's a decent sized investment from my point of view.

Aside from the dollars, Vyatta is now also part of the Citrix Ready product verification platform that will make Vyatta's routers ready for Citrix's cloud and virtualization offerings.

This is an interesting partnership - the way I see it, this partnership will give Citrix users/customers the ability to do an integrated routing/virtualization/remote desktop kind of stack. Citrix however has its own hardware too, like the Netscaler lineup, so it's not clear to me how the Vyatta partnership will compete - or just complement that offering.

For Citrix, they see Vyatta as complementary.



"Vyatta's solution is very complementary to the Citrix Cloud Center product family," said John Fanelli, vice president, solutions and community marketing at Citrix Systems in a statement. "Together, our goal is to provide customers with tightly integrated virtual infrastructure solutions that deliver cost savings and greater efficiency in enterprise and data center environments. Vyatta delivers a unique piece of the cloud puzzle by delivering open, scalable routing and security that is not tied to proprietary hardware."



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.

Time will tell how deep and how wide the Citrix/Vyatta partnership extends, but one thing is for sure - Vyatta has managed to convince at least one big vendor that an open source Linux router is the way forward for networking.