Nimble Storage revealed the results of a study that asked 600 IT professionals about their current position on VDI in the enterprise. The report includes some interesting figures about the drivers and challenges that are moving this industry, which provide an opportunity to reflect on how vendors have been addressing these requirements.

More than 60 percent of the respondents said they either have existing VDI deployments in place or are planning to implement their technology within their organization. However, almost as many–54 percent of the 600 participants –cited storage performance or storage cost as the main factor holding them back from investing in the technology.

Several solution providers have addressed that issue recently. Pano Logic, for example, provides a pre-configured VDI appliance that aims to trim overhead, and recently introduced Pano System 5, the latest version of its product which features extended support and enhanced core functionality. VMware is also moving in on the VDI market with several developments hitting the enterprise scene in recent months.

The company teamed up with Iomega (another EMC subsidiary) to certify the former’s Iomega StorCenter PX series network storage product family for powering VMware vSphere 5-powered servers. This is significant because vSphere plays a key role in most VDI deployments, and StorCenter PX puts an emphasis on scaling economics – i.e VDI for SMBs.

VMware is getting more involved in the user virtualization space, though Xiotech‘s  Brian Reagan noted the same cannot be said of the role it plays in the VDI Coalition during an interview in theCube. One of the reasons is likely to be the fact Citrix is a very active member of the coalition, and currently has the lead in the user virtualization space. The companies are also competing in the datacenter where VMware is the most dominant player, a situation that contributes to a rather intricate competition between the two.