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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing
In an interview with the Australian ITNews website, Dennis Rose, VP of Citrix Pacific, touted desktop virtualization as the next big thing alongside server virtualization. Short of news, the interview did have an interesting ending. Apparently, AVP for Citrix ANZ Rob Willis hinted at Citrix XenDesktop – iPhone compatibility when the most hyped phone in history hits the Australian market in a couple of months, during his keynote of the Citrix Application Conference.
Next Wednesday, Parallels will announce that it has sold the 1 millionth copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac. In one breath, they’re linking this number to the global Apple Mac market share, which has climbed from approximately 3% to nearly 7% in just under two years since Parallels Desktop for Mac was released.
Coincidence? We don’t think so. Parallels Desktop for Mac has basically eliminated the wall that previously existed between PCs and Macs. Now, everyone who wants a Mac can buy one without compromise and still run all their favorite Windows applications — something to keep in mind as Apple prepares to release quarterly results on Wednesday.
“Parallels Desktop not only broke down the barrier between the Mac and PC worlds, it also broke down the barrier that kept desktop virtualization from becoming a mainstream technology for consumers and professional users,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “We will continue innovating to extend our position as the desktop virtualization leader and provide our users with the fastest, easiest and most seamless solution available.”
Marketing Director Ben Rudolph told us at VMworld Europe that they were nearing 900 000 sold copies just 2 months ago (video interview here, around the 1:15 mark), which means their sales should average about 50 000 units per month.
Impressive sales figures, indeed. But linking these results publicly with Apple’s growing market share (coincidentally, right before Apple intends to release its quarterly results) is nothing but a bold statement that can hardly be proved by factual evidence.
Maybe Parallels is actually fishing for an acquisition by Steve Jobs himself? 🙂
We’re not sure what to think of VMware Team Fusion’ latest contest. If you upload a one-minute video about your experience in switching to VMware Fusion in order to run Windows on your Mac, or you write a blog post about it, you can win a set of prizes ranging from t-shirts, bumper stickers and an iPod Touch to a MacBook Air.
On itself, it’s just a nice, harmless marketing campaign to increase awareness about VMware Fusion on video sharing sites and gain extra backlinks for obvious reasons (might have something to do with the increasing pressure from competitors on VMware, aptly written out on bMighty). But we’d be surprised if tons of users go out of their way to create free marketing material for the company, even if the prizes (at least, the Apple products) are bound to spark interest here and there. It just seems it a bit too opportunistic, and they’re putting in an extra threshold by asking contestants to go through a bunch of instructions in a PDF file.
How about you, would you enter a contest to help VMware in getting more awareness for its desktop virtualization solutions?