VMware

With virtualization, cloud and portability, Microsoft may be building its first actual operating environment focused on the end user, despite years of claiming that's what Windows was.

VMware's concessions on vSphere 5 prices aren't perfect, but keep incentives that give customers a better grasp of cloud by making them pay according to rules of the fog, not the VM.

Software vendor CloudSwitch supports all hypervisors and most clouds with an abstraction layer designed to keep your VMs from knowing they're running somewhere other than your data center.

SMBs are driving a lot of the cloud market, which drives IT vendors to cater to them. SMBs aren't just motivated by cost, though; they use cloud to get more mobile, grow faster, increase sales.

VMware CIO Mark Egan runs a sophisticated IT shop, but even end users at a leading tech company want to focus on their jobs, not learning a new system with a steep learning curve.

At the same time VMware was placing a big bet on open-source cloud software, Microsoft barely entered the game.

Open-source code, support for a variety of tools and databases, available in your data center or someone else's, Cloud Foundry aims at Azure's weaknesses without adding too many of VMware's.

Appliance vendor V3 Systems says its $500/seat VDI server solves most of the speed problems holding virtual desktops back.

Companies with no virtual desktops rate the difficulty of getting some far higher than do companies that have done it before.

Employee-owned mobile devices are becoming a fact of life in most workplaces, but the pose some questions for employees and some big challenges for IT. Luckily, the number of options for handling the situation is growing and those options are diversifying to offer a range of solutions.

Analysts and vendors have been waiting years for 'The Year of the Virtual Desktop' that never happened; now iPads, iPhones may make the delay permanent.

LG and VMWare today announced a partnership to develop virtualization on smartphones, beginning with Android. In doing so they may solve many consumer and IT headaches about employee-owned smartphones in the workplace (and put LG and Android in a prime position for many enterprises).