Will VMware answer the call of the VDI Coalition?

VMware knows about partnerships. One of the statistics that got repeated often at VMworld 2010 in San Francisco was that for every $1 that companies spend on VMware, they spend $15 with partners. This partnership isn’t limited to working with big companies; if you’ve ever attended a VMworld conferences or VMUG, the participation and engagement of partners is impressive. It is also well known that desktop virtualization is an important space for VMware. This week, there was lots of coverage of the release of the iPad client for VMware View (read this great overview from Jason Boche or see the new app get the full Scoble treatment with this video). I posted an article this week that looked at the maturity of VDI technology and its ecosystem; while deployments are growing, the solution is still limited to niche deployments and the ecosystem is highly fragmented. One group that is working to help the maturity of the solutions is the VDI Coalition. In a discussion from Wikibon HQ, Brian Reagan of Xiotech discussed the charter and progress of the coalition. The coalition is committed to being hypervisor agnostic and has been trying to engage with VMware. Citrix has assigned some resources to help the coalition with building reference architectures and will also be hosting the group at its Synergy conference in May. So far, VMware has declined to participate in activities or to offer to host the group at VMworld. While every company must work out priorities and the coalition does not have any of VMware’s OEM partners on-board, it seems in VMware’s best interest to help increase the adoption of desktop virtualization technologies. Will VMware match Citrix’s move and bring the coalition to VMworld?

Find the full interview with Brian on SiliconAngle.tv.

[Cross-posted at Wikibon Blog]