As the competition continues to chase after VMware’s industry leadership, the company ensures that they will give their opponents a good, tough fight. Citrix is one of the those organizations which are closing the gap, proclaiming that they are also in it to win it, by way of the $200 million Cloud.com acquisition to feed their infrastructure 2.0 vision.

VMware, being one of the global leaders, answers back roaring, with the launch of vSphere 5 and other products. So far, the “monster” of cloud infrastructure suite has harnessed some early and rave reviews from experts and partners.

Director of IS at Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP, Bill Vance was one of first to extend their vote of confidence with VMware’s vSphere 5, saying, “Vblock platforms allow companies to simply and confidently reap the benefits of the latest and greatest technologies that are integrated, manufactured and supported as a converged infrastructure.

“With the support for VMware vSphere 5 on Vblock platforms, VCE demonstrates how easy it will be to leverage the industry and technology leadership of VMware, making it easy for us to move to the latest technologies.”

VMware is fast becoming the premier contender in the cloud computing realm, and even IT economics. Despite being hunted down by its rivals, VMware remains strong in the market.  Recent updates in their product line include targeting SMB’s with the release of the modified vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5. VMware also unveiled their latest in cloud security with the addition of Sensitive Data Discovery in vShield 5.

As the demand for cloud computing, virtualization and infrastructures progress, interested parties that can monetize these trends are also on the rise. Consequently, this becomes an arena of feature battles, as each provider looks to stand out from the crowd. . But perhaps in all warfare, this could be one of those that are deemed beneficial rather than destructive, with consumers and the enterprise harnessing all the good it can. This boost in VMware’s portfolio through vSphere 5 makes them even more dominant in the market and could be a proponent to industry shifts and trends.