Find the smart car at VMworld for a chance to win it! Stop by our VMworld booth (#1940) for details.

Greetings from Chicago, where I am attending Brian Madden’s seventh annual BriForum event.  The event got off to a great start yesterday.  It is a smaller event as conferences go, but you won’t find a larger concentration of the brightest minds in desktop virtualization anywhere.  BriForum provides a great opportunity to see and touch some of the best virtualization technology available today, but I have been particularly drawn to some of the sessions focused on where this is all headed.  Chetan Venkatesh from Atlantis Computing did a really interesting session yesterday morning called “Envisioning the Desktop of 2015: A Tale of Three Clouds and Liquid Desktop Computing,” and Brian Madden and Martin Ingram of AppSense revisited their past predictions for the evolution of desktop computing in “Looking Towards the New Desktop.”  In both cases, the brand of client-side desktop virtualization we practice at Virtual Computer factored heavily into the presenters’ view of the future.

Walking around BriForum, one really gets the sense that there is a perfect storm of industry events brewing that is really going to cause desktop virtualization to take off in the next 12 months.  For example, all signs are that Microsoft “got it right” with Windows 7, and that its release will be a catalyst for many organizations to look for new and innovative ways to deploy and manage their desktops.  We think we have one for them.  If you happen to be a BriForum and would like to connect to see a live demo of NxTop, feel free to grab me by the shirt, ping me on Twitter (@dlane), or use the form we have available on our web site.

Fortunately for me, my time spent contemplating the future of desktop virtualization with really sharp people will not end with my departure from BriForum on Thursday.  I am excited to be teaming up with Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group next week on the webinar, “Five Ways Virtualization Is Changing Your PC.”  It will be held next Wednesday (July 29) at  11:30 a.m. ET.  We will explore a number of the ways in which client-side desktop virtualization will transform the PC for both IT admins and end-users, including:

• The ability to run multiple operating systems on a single device and easily move from a personal to a corporate environment
• Easy migration from Windows XP to Windows Vista or soon Windows 7
• Enhanced data protection, backup and security
• Improved PC management for mobile and remote workers
• Remote desktop access to your documents, settings and self-installed applications

Visit our registration page to learn more or to register.

It’s been a busy and exciting few weeks here at Virtual Computer as we worked to put the finishing touches on our NxTop 1.0 release. The blog has been an unfortunate casualty, so my apologies for the gap between posts. However, it was truly all hands on deck. We had our own flavor of March Madness where we set up a complete customer environment (wired/wireless networking environment, Active Directory domain controller, NxTop Center management server, desktops PCs, laptop PCs, etc.), and while our QA team executed a methodical testing program, a steady stream of developers, company executives, marketing and PR staff, board members, and anyone else we could scare up jumped in to help put the 1.0 product through its paces. As you can see from the photo, we even augmented our QA staff by having them bring in their children in on the weekends to help with testing. (Hopefully, we don’t have any child labor watchdogs reading the blog….)

In conjunction with our NxTop 1.0 release, we announced an exciting new program on Monday called NxTop Now!. As a step beyond the beta testing we have been doing since November, NxTop Now! is a controlled release of NxTop to our first paying customers, a very exciting milestone for our company. It is one thing for someone to agree to put your beta product in a lab, but it a quite another for them to get their checkbook out and put some skin in the game. It is really a credit to our engineering team for developing a product that dazzles everyone who sees it and a sales team that is highly adept at breaking through the noise in an increasingly confusing client virtualization space. This type of execution starts at the top, I would like to publically congratulate Peter Marconi, our VP of engineering, and Sandrijn Stead, our VP of sales for leading the charge on these two very important fronts.

This choice of the name NxTop Now! for our controlled release program is reflection of one of our biggest sources of pride. There are number of companies out there talking about client hypervisor use cases at this point. We are the first to deliver a true end-to-end PC management solution that makes use of a bare-metal client hypervisor. I honestly can’t remember the last time I used more than two or three PowerPoint slides during a customer or partner meeting. Rather than talking about use cases, we show use cases. The consistent feedback is that having something that is “here and now” clearly separates us from others who have jumped into the bare-metal client virtualization sandbox. I am sure that won’t always be the case, so now it’s up to use to keep the gas pedal down. On to release 1.1!

Greetings from sunny Cannes, where a team of us from Virtual Computer is in town for VMworld Europe 2009.  We weren’t really sure what the turnout would be given the state of the global economy and the corresponding pressure on IT travel budgets.  However, we were pleasantly surprised by a strong showing by both exhibitors and conference attendees.

The biggest news of the show so far has been VMware’s announcement with Intel to collaborate on bare metal client hypervisor technology.  It made a pretty good splash though many (myself included) are viewing it as a bit of a “me too” announcement given the Intel partnership that Citrix announced back in January in conjunction with their Project Independence initiative.  As a startup, the first instinct is to get a bit nervous when larger industry players begin to jump into your sandbox.  However, in our case it has provided tremendous validation of the technology model we have been focused on since 2007.  Both the Citrix and VMware client hypervisor announcements have generated tremendous inbound interest in Virtual Computer, since many recognize that we have a pretty significant lead in the race to deliver centralized PC desktop management using bare metal client hypervisor technology.

I was excited to be invited by Virtual Strategy Magazine to contribute some of my perspectives on the VMworld Europe festivities as part of their event coverage.  I have tried to keep these posts a bit more vendor-neutral than my posts here on the Virtual Computer blog, and hopefully they provide a good general flavor for what is going on at the show.  Visit Virtual Strategy’s VMworld Europe coverage center for reports from me and other contributors in attendance.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out the report (PDF) that IDC’s Michael Rose did on Virtual Computer’s Series B funding and strategic relationship with Citrix Systems.  Michael is one of a small number of analysts who have been predicting the emergence of client hypervisor technology for quite some time, so when Alex and I showed up at the IDC offices last summer (complete with laser-printed stealth mode business cards in hand), I recall Michael saying something along the lines of, “It’s about time somebody actually did this.”  He didn’t just take our word for it though.  He quizzed us on the finer details of our product for a good two hours during that initial meeting and later followed it up with a visit to our office to see the NxTop in action for himself.

Here’s an excerpt of what Michael had to say in his recent brief:

Although Virtual Computer’s product strategy is based upon the use of a client-oriented version of the Xen hypervisor, it considers itself a desktop management vendor, not a virtualization company. Although this difference may seem like semantics, IDC believes it represents a main point of differentiation between the server and desktop virtualization market. IDC believes that compared to server virtualization, desktop virtualization will be far less disruptive, and that hypervisors will permeate desktop hardware far more quickly and extensively than servers, only a minority of which are virtualized according to our most recent data.

There is also a bit about the potential for a “XenSource-esque” acquisition in the future that gave us all chuckle.  We haven’t had nearly enough fun yet to start looking for the exit, but surely we are worth at least triple that price.  Server virtualization is the easy stuff!  

Download the full IDC report (PDF).

Ever wonder what announcing a $15 million fundraising round in the middle of a recession would do for your web traffic?  It would probably look something like this:

The apex of the chart is Monday and Tuesday of last week, both of which shattered our previous record for daily unique visitors that dates back to our company launch from stealth mode last September.  While I hid the numbers, the baseline traffic we were getting previously was very respectable, so the announcement clearly made a big splash.

The bulk of the traffic to the site last week resulted from the great press coverage our announcement generated.  Kudos to Kyla Kenney, our PR guru, for doing a great job getting the word out to press and analysts, and a thank you to Andy Cohen and the Citrix team for assisting with our press activities.

We have become a bit addicted to watching the web stats go up, so I guess it’s up to us now to keep the excitement about Virtual Computer and NxTop growing.

OK, I don’t break out the Han Solo quotes for just any occasion, so clearly something big is happening at Virtual Computer today. Earlier this morning, we made a major announcement that we just closed a $15 million series B financing round, which is big news in itself given the state of the global economy. However, equally significant is who is investing in the company. Our existing investors, Highland Capital Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners, doubled down on Virtual Computer, and we also welcomed in an exciting new strategic investor, Citrix Systems.

The addition of Citrix as an strategic investor is absolutely huge for us. I have already commented on the significance of the Citrix/Intel client hypervisor initiative and Project Independence and how they collectively stand to revolutionize corporate computing. An industry standard Xen-based hypervisor will dramatically accelerate Virtual Computer’s mission to refine PC management through client virtualization, and having two industry titans like Citrix and Intel throw their weight behind the client hypervisor model will only speed its adoption and acceptance.

Whenever the big guys jump into an emerging new technology area, there is always risk that the innovative startups who were there first will be squeezed on to the sidelines. An investment by Citrix signals that Virtual Computer’s unique vision and collection of important technology innovations have earned us a key seat at the table as these industry developments unfold in the months and years ahead.

With all of the excitement about the Citrix relationship, it is easy to overlook the significance of a $15 million infusion of capital into Virtual Computer. We have already been moving at a very good clip to outrun and outexecute potential competitors big and small, but this additional investment, which brings our total funding raised to date to $21 million, allows us to engage the hyperdrive on our go-to-market plan. It couldn’t have come at a better time as the client hypervisor / PC lifecycle management convergence we have been predicting is clearly heating up.

Traveling at light speed it not easy. As Han warned, without careful calculations you can fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova. However, you can’t win if you are not in the game, and I have to credit our co-founders, Dan McCall and Alex Vasilevsky, for coming up with a winning business plan and technology vision, building a winning team capable of making it a reality, and effectively steering a rocket ship that is moving faster than any of us imagined possible.

I thought it might be fun to start the new year by highlighting our most popular posts of the past year (well, the most popular posts since we started blogging in July):

5. When we emerged from stealth mode in September, there was a lot of interest in who we were and what we were doing. We posted brief bios of our management team and that post continues to be a very popular one: Meet the Virtual Computer Management Team

4. As we were wrapping up for some much needed time off during the Thanksgiving holiday, we posted about a milestone we were very excited about: First NxTop Beta is Live!

3. Our company launch made it to a popular virtualization blog and we decided to mention it: Virtual Computer Isolates Hardware, OS, Apps and User Data for More Secure Laptop and Desktop Management

2. The public launch of Virtual Computer just before VMworld generated a lot of attention: Virtual Computer Launches

1. Our most popular post of the year was one of our last posts of the year which showed NxTop running two operating systems and each operating system running a 3D graphics intensive program (Google Earth and Quake): 3D Graphics in Virtual Machines Running on a Bare Metal Client Hypervisor [Video]

You can view our full blog archives and keep reading in 2009. We will have more videos, more news of the NxTop launch, articles on technology and other posts talking about things we find interesting. If there’s something you want to see us post or cover, please let us know in the comments.

Happy New Year!

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.

This holiday season, we wanted to give something back to the community, so we held our first annual Virtual Computer Food Drive and also provided a very nice assortment of gifts to a family in need.  Even though we still have a relatively small team, the generosity of our employees was overwhelming.  Our food collection box was overflowing the day after we launched the drive.  It was also very rewarding to support a deserving family – in our case a couple with foster children – and make their holidays a bit brighter.

I would like to recognize the two non-profit organizations we worked with, the Greater Boston Food Bank and The Home for Little Wanderers for the important work they do year round and for making it easy for companies like ours to get involved.  A special thanks also to Kyla Kenney from our team for stepping out of the day-to-day chaos around here long enough to make it all happen.

As our company grows, so too will our positive impact on the community.  We have a number of ambitious community outreach plans on the table for 2009, so stay tuned!