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February 08, 2024
Community Driven Open Source Virtualization with Vates | Episode #78
In this episode, we sit down with Olivier Lambert, CEO and co-founder of Vates, the innovative company behind XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra. Established in Grenoble, France, in 2012, Vates has become a community favourite in the open-source virtualization space, offering powerful alternatives to traditional hypervisors. Olivier and I explore Vates roots in open-source solution…
In this episode, we sit down with Olivier Lambert, CEO and co-founder of Vates, the innovative company behind XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra. Established in Grenoble, France, in 2012, Vates has become a community favourite in the open-source virtualization space, offering powerful alternatives to traditional hypervisors. Olivier and I explore Vates roots in open-source solutions and how it's shaping the future of virtualization with its user-centric platforms. Lambert shares his insights on Vates' mission, the evolution of XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra, and how these tools are democratizing virtualization for organizations of all sizes.
In this episode, we sit down with Olivier Lambert, CEO and co-founder of Vates, the innovative company behind XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra. Established in Grenoble, France, in 2012, Vates has become a community favourite in the open-source virtualization space, offering powerful alternatives to traditional hypervisors. Olivier and I explore Vates roots in open-source solutions and how it's shaping the future of virtualization with its user-centric platforms. Lambert shares his insights on Vates' mission, the evolution of XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra, and how these tools are democratizing virtualization for organizations of all sizes.
Founded in the scenic Alps of Grenoble, France, Vates has carved a niche for itself by focusing on simplicity, support, and community-driven innovation. With headquarters still in Grenoble, it stands as a testament to the enduring value of open-source technology in today's rapidly evolving IT landscape.
Topics Covered:
- Olivier Lambert's background and the founding story of Vates.
- The development journey of Xen Orchestra and the strategic pivot to creating XCP-ng.
- The core philosophy of Vates: making virtualization accessible and open-source.
- The unique features and benefits of XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra as comprehensive virtualization solutions.
- Vates' response to the changing virtualization market, particularly the impact of VMware's acquisition by Broadcom.
- Future plans for Vates, focusing on enhancing their platforms and expanding their market presence.
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☑️ Technology and Topics Mentioned: Vates, XCP-ng, Xen Orchestra, Open Source Virtualization, Zen Hypervisor, Alternative Hypervisors, Virtualization Innovation, VMware, Broadcom Acquisition, IT Infrastructure Management.
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Transcript
RAW
you don't spend that much time to try to think about the engine in your car you're also thinking about everything around if it's comfortable you know consumption and so on I think for viralization platform it's the same hello and welcome to episode 78 of great things with great Tech the podcast highlighting compan is doing great things with great technology my name is Anthony speri and in this episode we're talking to a company that specializes an open source virtualization solutions they offer an integrated virtualization
platform built on the Zen hypervisor and a management and backup platform Zen Orchestra their Solutions are positioned as an alternative to the major hypervisors providing a comprehensive stack for organizations that company is Vates the creators of xcp and Zen Orchestra joining me today is Olivia Lambert CEO and co-founder at Vates welcome to the show hi and thank you for hosting me excellent so this is uh couldn't be better time Olivia in terms of um you know what's happening today in the land of hypervisors and
virtualization and I'm really excited to dig into what Vates are doing to you know basically enter us into a brand new world um of the hypervisor as we enter 2024 but before we get into that if you love great things with great Tech and would like to feature in future episodes you can click on the link on the show notes or head to jtw gt.
com and also go to YouTube hit the like And subscribe button all of our past episodes are on there also go to Spotify podcast that's where we're hosted and all the podcasts your Apple your Google your Spotify hit the like hit the follow and you will get all future episodes so with that out of the way Olivia let's let's talk about yourself first let's talk about the lead up to the founding of Vates but I'm interested in yourself you got quite a cool story I'm out of France but maybe give a bit of background about you and
where you've come from from a technology point of view in your career sure sure um so so I'm oiv uh as Anthony said and indeed um the background in the story before creating Vates uh is I think quite interesting especially in the light of the recent event in the viralization world so I'm myself a former system administrator I worked for a pretty large company before creating uh my own and I was you know uh it was let's say back in the 2000 and virtualization was pretty early back then and we started to deploy Zen as an
open source virtualization hypervisor and that's where I started to do things with that and at some point I realized that uh I'd love to do open source as my you know main driver every day so that's why I decided with two uh other co-founder to you know create a new adventure that wasn't really you know specific into the virtualization or whatnot it was you know integrating open source uh to start with our let's say local customers we we are based in grobal so in the Alps in France and so
the business started like this like not a software editor like we are today but integrator of any open source solution you can imagine database things like this and whatnot and then uh for our own requirements uh because we started to have many customers we wanted to you know have also a virtualization solution uh for our own machines uh that we had in a Colo and we wanted to manage those machines and at the time we were using uh the Citrix Zen s projects um and U the API of the vectorization platform is great but you only had one uh Windows UI
and as you can imagine um at Vates we are originally more you know Linux server guys yes so using you know heavy clients to manage our VM wasn't really something we love to so we decided to create an orchestrator on top of citric Zen server and we started Zen Orchestra and that's how we switch from you know being an integrator to software editor and we started with one first software that was just I would say the orchestrator thing but uh you know as it is open source uh what's funny with open source is um when you start something
you talk a bit about it around you and suddenly there's people interested so um a lot of people said okay I'd like to use your software your web UI to manage Z server and that's pretty much how the community was created you know kind almost out of thin air with many other people interested about the projects and then those people asked us to modify the software in a way they wanted to use it uh it's funny because you know we created it as something like I don't know very basic management tool and it
transform into a backup orchestration load balancer whatever whatnot you can imag so you know the story wasn't straightforward at all uh we you know been have a first life with a company then a second life and then a third one uh because we come to the uh xcp project which was in fact you know a fork of the Citrix Zen server platform so fork in open source is you just get the code because you disagree with the way it's the project is done you know sitrix doesn't have a great track record with open source in general uh so that's why
we decided uh to you know take that our own project uh and for that we made a Kickstarter campaign because also yeah the funny story about it is when we decided to make the fork we are in 2018 and you know virtualization in 2018 is already not sexy you know it's you know everyone is talking you know public Cloud containers and so it was done yeah exactly you know it's dead nobody needs any kind of virtualization technology and so on which is even more you know remarkable now to day with what's happening with
VMware but then I was myself kind of self-c convinced that indeed maybe virualization was dead so we said why not let's create a Kickstarter and see if people are interested in an fully open source and easy to use virualization platform in 2018 and to my own surprise we you know cut the Target in less than 24 hours and then I realized okay so there's a difference between what you can hear during you know talks and conferences about you know we are Netflix we are doing this we are doing that we are Google we are
doing this and doing that and the reality on what's going on into any you know companies regular companies having to still to deal with their you know existing virtualization software existing software uh and and things like that so it was kind of a you know uh a realization that people need something uh at some point to run their software you know the cloud is very good for many different use cases but for something that kind of stay that doesn't require elasticity anything like this uh it might be expensive so we did that where
I think we could say it was maybe the worst you know moment to to create a v a new virtualization platform because nobody cared about it you know and so anyway we did it because we found people interested into that and almost by accident I would say because we forked the Citrix platform we managed to get the whole stack you know we got the orchestration and backup platform that we did earlier Z and now we got the virtualization platform and then we said okay so now we got a wall stack so we will try to move forward from there and provide this as a
let's say complete solution and then you know uh something happened with VMware and changed almost everything for us everything yeah that's a yeah that's a lot to unpack there I've got a ton of questions about um number one you know when you say you were a system administrator integrator used like an IT guy to start with like how did that start were you just literally working on the early days in the early 2000s on those early virtualization platforms and obviously you know you had ESX Zen was
Zen was around but then the the orchestration that was around that you know I think back to those days when I was testing out those those platforms when the emergence of stuff like VMware Cloud director came out vcloud director but also Cloud stack open stack open nebula all of these um orchestration platforms that sat on top of the hypervisor was was where it was at so I'm pretty sure along the way I must have tested um zen zen Orchestra as well like so it's quite interesting that you jumped from just doing that to being
able to you know actually create an orchestration platform how I'm interested in that jump did you yeah do that did you find people that did it for you I mean what what was a sort of from A to B how did you get there yeah yeah that that's a very good question in fact uh as I would say it's a usual story where in Zen at the time there was nothing no you know gooey for it I mean I plain Zen back in I don't know 2005 something like this no orchestration platform existed at all so you had to deal with configuration file um common
lines and so on and I was frustrated by the fact that I started to have many machines and I couldn't tell where my VMS were basically on which physical machine and that frustration made me create something an early prototype uh in PHP back then say okay I will find a way to you know have a web server asking you know it was not really an API but something like this in Python if I remember back then and at least to display you know where my goddamn VMS are because when I'm shutting something I want to know it without connect to any
machine to type you know list my VM and so on so I was my first you you wereing it yeah good okay I was I was yeah I'm not a great developer but uh you know I clearly good enough I mean I was interested in the web Technologies from I would say the start of the web I'm kind of born with the web uh I mean uh using something in a web browser is you know the basic thing to me so when I wanted to have orchestration the browser was you know the normal way to follow and obviously very soon my code was really bad and I ask a friend my future
associate by the way uh to help me to do it well to use you know a good version control and so on and in fact the uh what's even more surprising is Zan Orchestra existed before we created the company like as a summer project I did for you know uh outside my work since I wanted to do something for that so it was a side project and when we created the company it was not even a topic you know it was something I made years ago and I kind of resurrected it uh let's say five years after because I realized
no other project was there and you know I I search I said maybe someone did something like I did and it wasn't the case and the blog I created five years ago continued to had I don't know one or 2,000 visitors per month and then I realized okay there's a need for that cloud stack and open stack were let's say the big guns because they're the large orchestrator at the data centeral level and they are pretty complex if you have few VM or less uh the cost to deploy them and to maintain them back in
the time uh was really huge so I wanted to make something for people like me with I don't know few dozens of physical machines and something to manage their Zen infrastructure this about this is about 2010 about 2010 was the time when you resurrected it and brought because I that's that's started yeah 2012 just after one year after creating the company I decided to resurrect the project that I created around 2009 2010 then uh so it was 2009 and so yes I and then that's where where I decided to be an interface not for PL
Zen but Zen embedded into zen server theorization platform and the reason why was uh the use in Zen server or something really great they made called the Zen API zappy because when Citrix purchased Zen you know back in 2007 uh the Citrix customer are windows shops mainly and they have you know no knowledge on Linux so they have to create this Windows head clients connecting to the Zen server and without having any Linux knowledge and very very very clunky as well for memory like a not a very not a very intuitive piece of
software it was it was it was it was not easy I remember evaluating different hypervisors back in that time frame and Zen was like I installed it and just went no way I'm not I'm not I'm not touching this compared to what was already there with even virtual server and then starting into ESX and then what hyperv was doing doing as well it it was just it was always a poor to me Zen was always like a poor cousin you pinpointing exactly the issue and I think one of the thing explaining our success is with Zan Orchestra we succeed
because we made something easy to use despite being open source I would say because you know it's not just a reputation it's a I would say almost a common thing that many open source projects are working sometimes really well but they are really hard to use and maintain and so we we wanted to make something a bit easier to use it's far from perfect but compared to what we had before it's a you know a tremendous Improvement and that's why people started to adopt the product and again it was a first on top of Zen server and
so our customers was in fact Citrix customers that's how we started to do things with a fully open source business with just you know you pay a monthly fee or yearly fee to have support and that's a pretty simple one it was even at the time flat price so even big customer customers with hundreds of machine could just take one Zen Orchestra subscription and it worked well so that's how we really you know um shape the company that's I think our first pivot that's becoming a company with only three
person to almost let's say 10 people before we created and then the virtualization platform so yeah so I mean the value proposition of the company was effectively you know like you said to make make something a little bit more simpler that was actually quite complex you know and through just your own drive your own Innovation you're able to Tinker a little bit you mentioned the side project that's a great story right so so was the company always called called what it was called like was it always uh Vates yeah it's
it's it's Vates and that's because uh that's a kind of a small wink because in Leon uh Vates mean Oracle so you know it was like as you know oracle is often seen as sometimes a bad company for some reasons especially for commercial reasons it was a way to say uh we want to become something big but the right way so we are named different that's why Vates is kind of someone able to see the future uh in Lon so oral means something it mean which is cool because I some compan some companies are named and they
this name because it's short and it's Snappy and it's supposed to do well but I love it when there's actually a a story and a reason behind yeah there's a pin that's that's it so talk about um the decision to you're doing Services you've the orchestra that's Orchestra that's doing the that's finding its way in the community you obviously leverage the community to build that up and I guess I guess in doing that that then allowed you as a distribution model to be able to go and Kickstart the
hypervisor right like I think so it's actually quite smart I love talking there's there's seven powers of business and and network effects and distribution is a big one so you you use the community as a distribution to be able to get the network effect to be able to crowdsource with the kickstarters how did how did the how did the decision to Kickstart that come about and what did it entail and you know what what was the amount that you were put it up for okay so uh basically um you are completely
correct um we managed to succeed by forking the project because we had a community beyond our back that's trusted us for years because uh we are doing uh I would say real open source in a way that it's fully open source it's not open core and we always shared everything everything every feature for people who want to play with their home lab and you know this trust we spent years to build was really helpful to bootstrap the hypervisor project the XC PNG project and the initial goal was and I would say even the initial idea was to
say um okay we'll have a very small Target uh that will help us to explore uh if it's possible already so it was like something 10K EUR something like this and said this is the minimal Gap we want to achieve it was like I wasn't sure about the interest about it so let's see because if people are paying and you had just t-shirts and mugs you know and a promise that we will do it but no actual support or whatever it was really if you believe in us just you know send us money and to us that's the
ultimate proof that you will be interested you know it's like instead of just toing the market you tell people if you're interested go ahead and you know we deliver and leap of fa leap of faith yeah exactly and and it was a liap of face also on on our end we said maybe we will never reach the target maybe nobody care and maybe we'd have do have done something else I don't know but then this in in in front of the success then we realize the importance of building a full stag rization platform that is
completely open with also you know us listening to what people are telling because this Community Trust us because we are open source but also because we added features they wanted you know they wanted back up we added back uh they wanted selfservice features we added that and so on and we always did like this I'm still you know spending I I would say onethird of my time on the community Forum to listen to that and I think that's really important yes that's really a key differentiator because when
you listen to your user sure your solution will never be perfect it will never be 100% of VMware for many reason we are not a multi-billion company but the fact that you listen to people get their feedback and build a product with them make them you know kind of hook into the product and they want you to succeed not just being a customer and I think that's one of our key differentiator in the end is being open the true way for both the code but also the way to listen to people that's that's very good and I I think before we
get into the the current state of where we're at with broadcom and VM where I do want to get an understanding of xcp and and understand the differentiators and obviously you know the fork that you did but you know what makes it so compelling today as a platform um you mentioned the backup you mentioned the self-service which is cool because you know the biggest thing like you know not a lot of backup companies support Zen out of the box right so to be able to build that into the product is great selfservice is
something that you know VMware obviously did quite well with VMware Cloud director then you've got the the open nebulas of the world and all the control panels that set on top of that so to have something but that was all that was all peac right so to have something completely built in from the start sounds like it's pretty compelling so just give just spend a couple of minutes talking about what is so compelling about xcp yeah sure so I think the the there's many differentiator especially if you
compare with VMR again on the technical level it's pretty clear that nobody on the market got 100% but uh as you know time pass with VMware we had many customers complaining that they have to buy features they don't care about but they have to pay for it so um I would say on our side uh there is let's start with the fact that we are open source I just said that but I think it's important in know way that xcp is now part of the Linux Foundation since the last two three years so it means everything we do uh is not locked to us
uh obviously our main uh I would say value is we develop the solution but we are we are not selling a license to use it we are selling support we are selling uh you know advice and how to setup that's also a bit different than big vendors with local integrators so sure we have some local integrators but you can talk directly to the editor and discuss your project what would be the best hardware what would be the best approach helping you to build a PC without signing any contract or anything like this you know really building
relationship so outside the product it's already the way we uh make a relationship with our users and customers um for the project itself um I would say the main driver for our VMware users migrating to our platform is it's not far from it in terms of components I mean we are true type one uh hypervisor like Zen yixi could be compared somehow uh we got a platform that you could compare we got the equivalent of this center with Zan Orchestra so it's like sure it's different but in a way you can
compare the components in a way that's pretty similar you have Central management consult with Zan oestra which is also doing backups of v machine backups without any agent and so on and so we found that people migrating from beware weren't really lost because they don't have to learn Linux commands or things like this so again we back to what made our success first with Zan Orchestra is sure we are open source but doesn't mean you have to get a you know huge bird and you know only able to type
you know very long Linux comments or to be a Linux expert it's meant to be turn key basically and that's a real differentiator against other open source solution where maybe you have to learn you know obviously you have to learn how to use a tool but yes uh the level of the the depth on things you have to learn we try to make it easier uh with the UI uh we got an API C and on but anyway to have a a look and feel that is closer to the usual product on the market than and the niche you know solution that requires you know tape and
whatever to make it work so I think that's one compelling thing in fact our user doesn't they they don't care about the fact we run Zen and whatnot they want a platform that just works and that you know they install the iso next next it's installed I can boot my VMS and that's it that's really compelling yeah I think you make a good point there like being able to abstract the hypervisor and make it irrelevant is very important um oh yes especially into day and age and you know years obviously
you understand that you know for years there was these hypervisor wars right like you know it was always you know hyperv versus VMware the new tanic came in and caused a stir and they were the big three and it was it was it was very religious in in a way right but ultimately you know we're talking about something that can be democratized as well it should be underlying feature that you never never really have to worry about but somehow vmw were able to create enough of a a market and a condition in that market where the
hypervisor they produced was seen to be the best by mile in terms of features functionalities ease of use um whether that was true or not that's the perception and through that um and look it's a great product don't get me wrong I mean I've built my I've built my career you all agree on that that's exactly right you know so I'm not goingon to I'm not going to sit here and say that it was it was horrible but I'm not going to also by the same token sit here and say that it was perfect because
the amount of support cases that I that I had during my time as owning a platform that was based on the the hypervisor it was Nightmare and to be fair even when hyperv there was just problems all the time but I think that's the nature of the game right that was the nature of what it was it was always some sort of issue because it's a very complex sort of platform when you're taking networking storage applications that use you know there's all sorts of variables that come into play here and that's difficult so it's never
it's never an environment where you're going to get absolute perfection but somehow the mentality that got brought out there was that VMware was Perfection and they basically owned a monopoly at the Enterprise level for that so they were seen as the Enterprise play and if you're an Enterprise you have to have VMware and that was it um end of story as you went down and you started to go into the smme SMB this is where alternative hypervisors came to play and that's where hyperv was there new tanic
played in it and I always thought that you know KVM and Zen were there but I also thought that the kvms of the worlds the Open Stacks of the world they were there for Telos and that sort of land so they f f filled that Niche so in terms of your nich for your product I mean where did it take hold and where is it sort of sitting at the moment um I think it's um again you're right and I think today uh the value of a product is the entire solution first it's not just the hypervisor I mean you don't spend that much time to you know
try to think about the engine in your car you're also thinking about everything around if it's comfortable you know consumption and so I think for virualization platform it's the same you know we manage all of our KVM Zen VMware and so on to have a pretty decent base you know operation in virtualization there's a lot of work regarding security compatibility and so on but still it works pretty well so now what matters for the end user and the target we have mostly is as you said could be for small
to medium infrastructure where for example we are not targeting to be used as a tool stack inside the public Cloud uh it makes sense if you want to go public Cloud size it's as you said open stack Cloud stack and so on but if you have something like from I don't know three to few hundred machines um then that makes sense and for example where it makes Al also a lot of sense um is in the private Cloud area where you know you want to you don't want maybe to still have things on Prem you want to rent your servers because you
don't want to purchase them anymore uh but cloud is too expensive so the the good fit is to use a private cloud and you rent the solution for I don't know VH or whatever provider for VMware I think it was a great strength to have those deals with many you know hosting providers and said you know mon that's that's what I did that was my that was my day job for 10 years of my exactly and that's perfectly I mean outside the on Prime thing that still exists and will continue to exist for years for
people as I said from 3 to fews hosts then the uh you know manage private Cloud area is where we could shine because it's in the end relatively close to the on Prem stuff and it's the area between you know again three and 50 100 200 300 obviously there's outliers you know we have users with one machine and we have very large users like kayak from kayak.
com with I don't know maybe 2,000 machines running XP yeah but but yeah but they're not using it the same way than the average Joe you know they are kind of using all through terraform and Packer and API and so on they basically throw a physical machine like you know we do for a VM so it's another level it's another scale but it works too so um but the core of the target we have is I would say people still having an infrastructure on Prem or uh you know having third party Cod or hosting provider now having trouble with VMR pricing obviously and then
those people are seeking for alternative that won't make it too different from people coming from VMware because you don't want just to let them okay so you have a root access on this Linux and go ahead uh create you know KVM machines with the common line that won't be obviously something that people will like to do so that's why we are kind of in the middle ground by sure we are open source uh but we don't want to be you know too complicated to manage so it's a kind of Best of Both Worlds at least
that's where we are going and where we we I I think construct build our success and that that's the main reason yeah and look it's it's definitely vmware's dominance over the last oh 15 years or so really since you know the early mid 2000s it's been significant and like we talked about earlier it created a virtual monopoly where there wasn't really a monopoly but there was a monopoly in the market you know defo and yeah deao standard that's it right and it's just the way it is we about this
and they did it very smartly um and I think what's happened now is that people have to start to think about the hypervisor again all of a sudden where before there was no there was never a question Y no worries we run vmw yeah we're going into the cloud but on premises we're still going to run esxi we've got Venter running it's it's reasonable it's doing it job we're happy with it you know there are some problems every time you know sometimes you know would install the first version as an
example but it's still the best one out there but now what's happened with the broadcom scenario is that it's it's created a bit of fear and uncertainty and doubt yes fud it's it's fud right that's been created and I think also that's the fud has been fueled by um other other companies offering similar Solutions as well like I don't think I haven't seen you guys do it very much but I know that that's not way we work you know we we never I mean I I'm happy to tell VMware is a great product and
that's not the problem right now uh the problem is the way you know broadcom is trying to you know uh squeeze it to take you know transform it into a bigger Cash Cow and that's not a product problem that's you know a commercial problem sales problem or whatever you name it that's not a technical issue in the end that that's right and so to that end it still has right and you don't want to see I I call it ambulance chasing right when when something like when when something goes down you chase it I don't
think it's not right to do that however what has happened is people need to think about Alternatives because all of a sudden um for various reasons costs being the predominant reason they have to look at it so you know I think now it's really interesting that we're entered this this this era of virtualization where the likes of you know parallels Oracle Citrix hyperv proxmox is getting mentioned you know Red Hat probably maybe prematurely killed rhv you know I agree they might be rethinking that one now right you
know yeah I mean overt still exists and I think um Oracle sounds like they're going to keep that up upstream and keep it going um but I think it's really cool that a lot of these other hypervisors are coming out now as Alternatives and there's Choice again but yeah to the point you've been around for you know you started the or orchestra thing 10 15 years ago your hypervisor is already you know 2018 to 2024 we're talking already 5 years of maturity here it's not like these things are popping up overnight so
I think the great thing is the customers have choice but are they really going to when push comes to to shove move across so how would you how would you go about talking to a customer that might be uming and aring because of the cost so that that's yeah that that's a good question and uh to be fair as we are a company made by technical people I have to admit we are not great salese and that's people coming to us in fact and but you're very endearing and I think that's a great positive very endearing
yeah I I mean I mean it's inbound like we call that so people are coming to us and said maybe we have a a call or we've been reach something like one lead per hour coming and said I'm using VMware I can't pay the next you know uh uh time I need to renew or I need to Ren the hardware because the uh you know the hardware compatibility list is very limited and my Hardware that's only three years ago I have to ditch it this is not acceptable and you know all the things that makes the you know a problem
with VMware and again it could be a money problem it could be a renew Hardware renewal problem a trust problem but also I would say you know um a long-term relationship thing that is broken uh because they started to remove many and people start to just said we have some big you know big leads that coming to us and said we have hundreds of machine obviously we won't change everything just now but just help us to start mitigating the risk so the idea is for a new project or Hardware that we maybe wanted to decommission then we
will install your platform we'll install one two three four application that we run that are maybe not critical and then more and more and more and then for them it's an insurance on you know for the next time we could continue to grow our team internally will be train on the platform and that's how they make migration it's step by step and I think I like this approach because we are not here to say we replace 100% of the VMware feature again we said okay you could start to mitigate that risk so
that's for the the biggest one and then the smaller one are kind of you know uh start with one machine and it's very fast and then they made migration in few weeks and that's it so um people that are coming to us I think already made the decision in their head to really try something else so I can tell for those that are still hesitating and I'm not telling them that they must because obviously every case is different but I think the idea to at least explore and mitigate the risk and learning something
else and as you said it's in a question of diversity on the market and diversity is good because when there's no diversity there's a monopoly and the Monopoly will lead to the broadcom situation so we we are kind of all you know uh uh I would say guilty of that situation because maybe we didn't want to think about it we said this is done you know there's only one player I don't want to think about it I will never be fired because I choose VMware you know and yeah that mindset helped to build
that yeah I think you mentioned something that was interesting just before when you talked about people you know um for for net new ma a net new project has old machines run out or as old Hardware times out they might buy a new one but they might move a workload that's non-critical that sounds to me very similar to how people approach the move from on premises of the cloud first you know what I mean like oh yeah that's how they started let's put something that's not critical on let's start putting
small workloads on then as we get as we get used to it as we get used solution as we get trust in the platform then we'll move everything across to actually interesting that you know we're talking about the same methodology that people would have gone to the cloud with which to be fair is just now hypervisor at times right so exactly I think that's very interesting so I think to your point mainly about how people will will do it yes they will start to realize that as things start to age out by attrition they will then go
okay let's move one let's move two and I think from your point of view are you going to are you going to be looking to develop tooling that will Aid in migration or obviously we started to do that in fact due to the pressure of the acquisition uh as soon as it was announced we started to think about it and we made a tool right in Zan orchestra that will connect to your uh VIs C stuff and list the machine and then you select the machine and you could import them on the fly without having you know a shared storage to put
your ovf blah blah blah it's just triming the VM to our platform and yes because that's 99% of our new customers are coming from VMware so this is kind of our priority and things also which is really interesting if those users are you know asking for features sometimes we do not have but it helps to create the road map of tomorrow and said okay we need to prioritize that because those users are maybe more demanding than our you know historical Community the early adopters and so on but to me I like it
because it's a challenge and I want to get there I want to get you know similar features and to grow the product and and the the the funny thing about it is um sure we are based in France but I would say 60 to almost 70% of our revenue is made in the US so the the US is the first place where people started to make the migration and where the growth is the biggest one and in Europe we just started to realize the danger as soon as broadcom made the first announcement regarding changing in pricing and so on
but it was like kind of everyone was crossing fingers in Europe and said I hope this won't change too much but when it started I would say in the last three months it's really crazy because everyone in Europe like from small companies to public institution they are really kind crazy trying to find options and so on because they just realize it's happening and I have to say in the US they're kind of less fearful to try something else you know it's a kind of a mentality of taking risks and so on yes
and that's why the US is now our biggest you know market and I like to say we are not you know having the success because there's only French companies using it that's the opposite that's probably one of our smallest Market people are using it because it works so that's pretty much it and that's I love I love the notion of it just works I mean you know you know I work for V software and that's that that's been our from the start it just works you know and it's uh it's it's a good thing to have and I
think the way that you've talked about it in terms of the problem that you you were trying to solve with the orchestra the fact that you were trying to sort of split and you know make a new hypervisor when Citrix wasn't doing their push pulling their weight and you were trying to basically make the product better it speaks volumes and I think what you just talked about about now The Challenge on on you guys and others in this market because we will see the guys that are out out there that have been somewhat
established for the last 10 to 10 to 5 years in this space but very much Niche players the markets all of a sudden going to open up and you're going to get bigger but there's going to be competition again right so you have to be able to differentiate you have to be nimble you have to be able to innovate because the the problem with VMware having that Monopoly was that they had that Monopoly and people kind of got used to it and they got used to the features um and so I think that that's the biggest challenge for for you guys
going forward but it's it's it's been a tremendous um you know conversation I really love the history I love the name I love where you came from I love the fact that you started this by just coding you know and working with not even really apis back in the day but just trying to make something better out of it need so you know this has got a proper story of innovation and need I I love the fact that you guys are doing it so it's been good to have you on the show we could have talked for a lot
longer um really I'm really interested to see where Vates goes I'm looking forward to the growth of the xn PNG and the Zen orchestrator and what you guys are doing in the space so just as a final reminder if you love great things with great Tech and would like to feature on future episodes please click on the link on the show notes head to GTW gt.
com and register your interest thanks again to Vates thank you Oliver and we will see next time on great things Tech
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