If 2008 signaled anything else than economic woes, it marked a heightened interest in desktop virtualization. A number of acquisitions occurred in 2009 – Microsoft bought Kidaro and Calista Technologies, Sun snapped up Innotek and Red Hat reeled in Qumranet. Each of these companies focus on desktop virtualization.
There are many ways to replace the traditional ‘thick’ client – users can adopt the Citrix virtualization model, they can use VMware’s recently announced VMware View or they can hope to adopt Microsoft’s Enterprise Desktop Virtualion (MED-V), which is the fruit of its Kidaro acquisition. MED-V builds on Microsoft’s virtualization platform and lets legacy OS images be hosted on Vist desktops, similar to what VMware does with ACE.
Of the acquisitions of start-ups doing desktop virtualization are:
01/08 Application virtualization – the process of hosting applications in secure containers was big too in 2008. VMware started off January with the acquisition of ThinStall. In April Symantec acquired AppStream, a vendor that offers on-demand application virtualization. In September KACE acquired Computers in Motion and Symantec acquired nSuite.
Microsoft acquires Calista Technologies
02/08 Sun acquires Innotek
03/08 Microsoft acquires Kidaro
09/08 Red Hat acquires hosted applications vendor Qumranet
The rest of the virtualization acquisitions were a mixed bag, spread out among security, mobile IP and disaster recovery companies. Companies in this category are:
01/08 Quest Software acquires Vizioncore for disaster recovery and data protection.
02/08 Novell acquires PlateSpin for virtualization management
05/08 VMware acquires B-Hive Virtualization management
11/08 VMware acquires Trango – hypervisor for mobile devices
11/08 IBM acquires Transitive – cross-platform virtualization
11/08 VMware acquires virtualization security company Blue Lane Technologies
12/09 VMware acquires Tungsten Graphics for 3D graphics virtualization
Consolidation of the virtualization market is occurring as vendors realized how important virtualization is to their customers.
Look in 2009 for more companies to be snapped up.
