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.

When the topic of virtualization comes up, there are really only four companies that come to mind: Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, and Virtual Computer.  Right? 

The folks at SAP recently finalized the agenda for their upcoming SAP Virtualization Week 2009, scheduled for April 20 – 23 in Palo Alto, CA.  One of the highlights of the event will be a panel discussion that will feature our own Alex Vasilevsky along with Simon Crosby of Citrix, Mike Neil of Microsoft, and Steve Herrod of VMware.  I am guessing that it will be a lively and entertaining discussion.

The event agenda and registration details can be found on the SAP web site.  The SAP event timing and location lines up very well with the IDC Virtualization Forum West if you happen to be attending that event.  Travel budget in shreds on the floor?  SAP is also offering an option to view a webcast of the event via Citrix GoToWebinar.

Chris Wolf from Burton Group did a nice wrap-up post on the virtualization panel at the Catalyst Europe conference that featured our CEO, Dan McCall.  We were pleased that virtual machine interoperability was a key topic of discussion.  This is an area that is near and dear to us.  Chris highlighted the fact that Citrix has taken steps on the server side to make virtual machines created on XenServer capable of running on Microsoft Hyper-V without conversion.

These types of initiatives are extremely positive in our view, as anything that makes life easier for corporations to deploy virtualization in multi-vendor environments is ultimately good for all of us.  Each virtualization vendor would love to “own” an account, and the customers themselves would likely prefer to standardize on a specific virtualization technology.  However, the reality is that vendor relationships evolve, companies acquire other companies, and IT environments ultimately end up looking a bit more complex than anyone would prefer.

At Virtual Computer, we have been focused on interoperability since day one.  We felt it was necessary to deliver a solution to the marketplace that would interoperate with major virtualization platforms natively without conversions.   We incorporated into our client-optimized bare metal hypervisor full, conversion-free interoperability with Microsoft virtualization technologies such as Hyper-V, Virtual Server, and Virtual PC.  We are also very pleased by the efforts going on in the DMTF and the virtualization industry to define a common interchange format – OVF – that would facilitate interoperability between various virtualization platforms.

Bottom line people should stop obsessing about choosing the “right” virtualization technology – interoperability between platforms removes the angst of the decision.  And at the end of the day virtualization technology is just that – a technology; and what kind of solution one delivers with that technology is what really matters the most.

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.