VMware Europe is being held at Copenhagen this week, and the regular fair bit of updates and announcements is coming out of the conference. One interesting highlight is the company’s new Rapid Desktop Program, which allows OEMs to build pre-configured and pre-packed VDI appliances to simplify deployments and reduce overheads. Partners interested in signing up for the program are required to pass several performance tests.

Pivot3 is one of the companies that signed up for Rapid Desktop, and launched its stackable vStac VDI appliance at the conference. A vStac powered deployment can run anything between 50 and 1000 virtual desktops.

VMware is looking to speed up the virtual desktop trend and increase adoption among enterprises, namely because it’s looking to expand its own foothold in this industry. Citrix, a company that competes with VMware in the hypervisor scene as well, currently holds the dominant share of the VDI market.

VMware is expanding to new territories beyond its core data virtualization business, including VDI and the cloud. The latest evidence from that also comes from the company’s ecosystem, specifically from cloud service provider Venyu. It announced today that the VenyuCloud public cloud service obtained the VMware vCloud Powered status, thanks to customers ability to migrate data from their VMware deployments onto Venyu’s platform smoothly.

VMware is adapting to market trends by expanding its partnerbase and launching new initiatives, but the same can be said from the operational standpoint. Chief executive Paul Maritz said in a keynote that his company will have to invest in adding more automaton and simplicity in order to keep up with the market, in addition to changing their existing business model.

“In a response to the controversial introduction of VMware’s new vRAM-based pricing model earlier this year, Maritz said that the changes had been “fairly favourable” to customers, but added that eventually, the company will probably move to a more consumption-based model.”