Yesterday at “VMworld day 0” (the partner and developer day) at the partner briefing, VMware VP of Field Operations Carl Eschenbach was sounding pretty confident about the future of desktop virtualization.
VMware has been banging the VDI drum for a few years now. So far VMware has signed up a little over 7000 customers, good for +1M seats. Yet Citrix still has higher top of mind awareness when it comes to centralized end-user computing environments.
VMware is confident that with upcoming new releases of VMware View and the PC over IP protocol (developed together with Terradici) they can offer a much richer experience than Citrix with XenApp.
A few quotes from this presentation are too good to leave out:
“We started with desktop products 11 years ago. We know more about this field than anyone else.”
The money quote though came right at the finish:
“Citrix better buckle up, because they’re going to war with us, and we’re ready!”