Virtualization vendor Citrix Systems Inc. is hoping to win over customers from its arch rival VMware Inc., with the launch of a free kit and cloud service for developers who want to migrate from VMware’s Horizon View to Citrix’s XenApp and XenDesktop.

The offer comes with a big discount – with Citrix knocking off up to 50 percent of its license fees for VMware Horizon customers when they switch to the Citrix Workspace Suite. According to Citrix, those who do decided to defect will not see any downtime, nor will they experience any disruption or productivity loss.

“If you thought migration would be hard and time-consuming, then we have some good news for you,” Vishal Ganeriwala, director of technical marketing at Citrix, wrote in a blog post. “The migration service can help you migrate in less than 15 minutes with almost no downtime if you have a XenDesktop environment deployed. Now, do I have your attention?”

Citrix said it’s making the migration kit available for a limited time following big demand from enterprise customers, which include an unnamed Candian bank and an East Coast hospital. According to Citrix, both customers were struggling with management issues and user complaints, but where concerned about the costs and risks associated with migrating from Horizon View to XenDesktop.

The migration kit is available through Citrix Lifecycle Management, and gives administrators the option of performing an ‘in-place migration’ by exporting application and desktop settings directly from Horizon View.

To further tempt defections, Citrix made a few claims about the superiority of XenDesktop, saying it offers faster image updates, better performance when launching apps, printing and saving files, and a reduced bandwidth requirement for HTML5 access.

Such discounts and incentives are fairly common in the tech world, but Citrix’s offer is notable for its timing – the migration kit was unveiled last week just as VMware was staging its annual VMworld conference. Citrix also took a shot at the “one cloud, any application, any device” theme being bandied around at VMworld, saying the idea is restrictive and repeatedly asking via Twitter: #WhyOnlyOne?

If you’re interested, here’s a quick video demonstrating how easy it is to migrate to Citrix:

Image credit: Jpussin via pixabay.com