Alex Vasilevsky and I had an enjoyable discussion yesterday with Dan Kusnetzky of the Kusnetzky Group, and he posted an update on our company this morning on his ZDNet “Virtually Speaking” blog. It is quickly becoming clear that Dan is one of the hardest working guys in the virtualization business. When we originally came out of stealth mode back in September, he made time for a briefing on Labor Day morning (sadly, we were all in the office making a final push towards VMworld), and clearly he is powering through the late December holiday lull as well.

Dan keyed in on an important aspect of our value proposition: the fact that we are building an end-to-end solution that includes both a feature-rich management system and a type 1 (“bare metal”) client hypervisor.  Doing both is hard, but we saw it as the only way to create real value for our customers.  While we are not a consumer technology (yet, anyways), we take our cue from MP3 players.  They existed before the iPod, but it was only when Apple brought together a great management tool (iTunes) that worked seamlessly with a great player (iPod) that downloadable music really took off.

Here is Dan’s take:

Unlike some competitors that focus on the hypervisor and just assume a management system exists that would help the IT administrators manage the encapsulated workloads, Virtual Computer started with the management system and then built a small hypervisor/client management tool.

This approach appears likely to result in a very well managed, optimal environment.

Another busy day at VMworld – once again, thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to watch a demo and talk to us. We know there’s a lot going on at the show and appreciate everyone taking the time (and if you haven’t stopped by, we’re in booth #562 and would love to show you a live NxTop demo)!

Some coverage from the show:

SearchVMware.com / TechTarget stopped by and wrote some kind words about us:

VMware not the first

VMware, however, is the Christopher Columbus of the hypervisor-based virtual desktop approach. Just as Columbus wasn’t really the first to discover America, VMware wasn’t actually the first to come out with this particular idea. I met with a smaller company, Virtual Computer, on the VMworld floor today. Virtual Computer had also announced its product the day prior. NxTop — which is almost identical to vClient — stands out for one big reason: It’s here, at VMworld, and you can see it in action today. VMware has yet to  demo vClient.

Dan Kusnetzky, as part of an overall blog entry on desktop virtualization, said:

Virtual Computer was demonstrating their own approach to a highly managed, highly secure VDI-based solution. Their technology was interesting in that it allowed each of the layers of technology making up a desktop solution (application, data, personalization and underlying operating system) to be managed from a common repository.

Gotta run – more later if I have time.