Xen to Become Linux Foundation Collaborative Project SAN

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 15, 2013) - The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the Xen Project is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.

Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. By spreading the collaborative DNA of the largest collaborative software development project in history, The Linux Foundation provides the essential collaborative and organizational framework so project hosts can focus on innovation and results. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects span the enterprise, mobile and embedded markets and are backed by many of the largest names in computing.

The Xen Project is an open source virtualization platform licensed under the GPLv2 with a similar governance structure to the Linux kernel. Designed from the start for cloud computing, the project has more than a decade of development and is being used by more than 10 million users. As the project experiences contributions from an increasingly diverse group of companies, it is looking to The Linux Foundation to be a neutral forum for providing guidance and facilitating a collaborative network.

The following companies will contribute to and guide the Xen Project as founding members of the Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation: Amazon Web Services, AMD, Bromium, Calxeda, CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix, Google, Intel, Oracle, Samsung and Verizon.

"Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects have at least one thing in common and that is they all use collaborative development to advance and accelerate technology innovation," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. "The Xen Project is an important open source community project that provides valuable technology to the entire Linux and open source ecosystem. It's a natural move for us to help nurture collaboration to advance this technology."

"The Linux Foundation will provide the necessary forum and guidance for the Xen Project to be adapted by the diverse group of contributors who are taking advantage of the project's many benefits," said Peder Ulander, VP, Open Source Solutions, Citrix. "We're committed to the Xen Project and look forward to continuing our active participation and collaborating with companies across industries to advance Xen Project for multiple applications."

Advances in virtualization technologies are key to the ongoing growth of Linux in the enterprise and cloud computing. The open source model thrives when users can exercise freedom of choice, so supporting a range of open source virtualization platforms and facilitating collaboration across open source communities is a priority for The Linux Foundation. In addition to providing the necessary framework to support the Xen Project community's growth, The Linux Foundation also supports the KVM community by hosting KVM Forum and other activities that support the project.

Recent Xen Project highlights include:

• The addition of Mirage OS, a library OS that supports the most common web protocols and enables the development of sealed Xen Project appliances that can be run without a guest operating system on any Xen Project based cloud - led by Cambridge University
• Support for ARMv7 and ARMv8 based servers - led by Citrix
• Improvements to Nested Virtualization - led by Intel
• Significant extensions to the Xen Project Security Modules and Flask - led by the National Security Agency
• A new virtualization mode called PVH, which promises to combine the best aspects of hardware virtualization and paravirtualization - led by Oracle
• Significant performance and scalability improvements - led by SUSE

For more information about the Xen Project and to get involved, please visit: http://www.xenproject.org.

The Xen Project 10-Year Birthday Bash Tonight
Celebrating 10 years of development, the Xen Project was originally conceived at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in 2003. A 10-year birthday celebration will be held in conjunction with this week's Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit and will take place tonight, Monday, April 15, 2013 at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco. To RSVP and for additional details, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit/evening-event

Supporting Comments
AMD
"AMD is focused on providing customers with choice and we view Xen as key to a healthy open source virtualization ecosystem. We are excited that The Linux Foundation is adopting Xen as a project," said Leendert van Doorn, Corporate Fellow, AMD. "As the host for the world's largest collaborative development project, Linux, The Linux Foundation is in the most natural position to host and facilitate advances in a variety of open source technologies."

Bromium
"The Xen hypervisor is the foundation of every successful public cloud service today. In addition it delivers virtual infrastructure to thousands of enterprise private clouds, hosting mission critical server and virtual desktop workloads," said Ian Pratt, chairman of xen.org. "Now Xen is set to transform the security and manageability of PCs and mobile devices. It is important for such a strategic piece of software to be properly managed on behalf of the industry, and it's transition into The Linux Foundation marks an important milestone for the community and gives all vendors the confidence they need to be sure that Xen will continue to be developed and supported for the benefit of all."

Calxeda
"The Xen Project is essential to enabling ARM-based servers to improve data center efficiency," said Larry Wikelius, Co-Founder and VP Software, Calxeda. "We're looking forward to actively contributing to the future of the Xen Project and collaborating with our peers and The Linux Foundation on this work."

Cisco
"Cisco has been developing and offering consistent virtualized and cloud solutions across multiple hypervisors for enterprises and service providers and considers Xen to be an essential component of the Cisco solutions," said Saravan Rajendran, Vice President & General Manager, Cloud Networking and Services Group, Cisco. "Inclusion of Xen as an open source project in the Linux Foundation will bring collaboration and industry support to propel innovation and greater adoption."

CA Technologies
"Bringing Xen into The Linux Foundation will foster greater innovation around virtualization," said Jay Williams, VP of Product Management at CA Technologies, a member of the Xen Project. "This innovation will be of particular benefit to users of solutions such as CA AppLogic, which has always leveraged the power of Xen in order to provide greater value and flexibility to our customers and partners."

Intel
"As one of the founding members of the Xen Project, Intel has long been a leading contributor to open source virtualization. Intel strives to ensure that the Xen environment powered by Intel® Architecture delivers exceptional performance, scalability, reliability, security, and power efficiency. Adding Xen as a Linux Foundation Collaborative project allows the community to benefit from important open source events and initiatives," said Imad Sousou, Vice President for Intel's Software and Services Group and General Manager for Intel Open Source Technology Center.

Oracle
"The Xen Project and the community that supports and participates in its development thrives from collaboration across a diverse group of companies and individuals," said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle. "The Linux Foundation will provide a vendor-neutral forum for the project in which that collaboration can expand and deliver benefits for everyone."

Samsung
"The Xen Project is an important collaborative effort that Samsung supports," said Sang-bum Suh, Vice President, Samsung. "We're looking forward to working with The Linux Foundation and other members in the months ahead on the Xen Project."

Verizon Terremark
"Open source software and collaboration results in market growth and increased innovation," said Chris Drumgoole, Senior Vice President, Verizon Terremark. "Verizon Terremark is committed to participating in open source communities and collaborative development efforts that benefit the entire industry and we see the Xen Project as one of those priority projects."

About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences, including LinuxCon, and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

Trademarks: The Linux Foundation, Linux Standard Base, MeeGo, Tizen, Yocto Project and Xen Project are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. OpenDaylight Project is a trademark of the OpenDaylight Project, Inc.