Today we’re pleased to announce the acquisition of Thinstall and its agentless application virtualization technology. Here is VMware’s Warren Ponder on the significance on his Virtual Desktop Blog:
Where VMware VDI enables organizations to break the bind between the
Desktop OS and physical desktops systems. Thinstall allows
organizations to break the bind of the Desktop OS and the Applications.
Combined organizations will be able to start delivering dynamic desktop
environments and better manage desktop computing across the enterprise.
With the ThinStall VOS – Virtual Operating System, organizations can
easily package and deploy the most complex applicaitons without
worrying about application conflicts or costly and challenging
application sequencing operations.
For a deep dive, there is an hour-long video, podcasts, white papers, and some downloadable trials on the VMware site: VMware to Acquire Thinstall.
Brian Madden, noted desktop computing expert, calls it "a brilliant move": VMware buys Thinstall! What does it mean?
The key differentiator between Thinstall and the other products is that
Thinstall is "agentless." It doesn’t require any software agent to be
pre-installed on a workstation before Thinstall-packaged applications
can run. …The most obvious place for Thinstall in VMware’s solution stack is
for use with their Windows XP and Windows Vista desktop delivery
products, including their VDI solutions for server-based computing scenarios and VMware ACE
for local computing scenarios. Thinstall is great here because the more
apps you package with Thinstall, the less you have to build into your
base Windows disk image that your desktop users will use.Last September I wrote an article about the importance of a "stateless" desktop disk
(which is important regardless of whether your users are running the
desktop locally or remotely). Owning an application virtualization
capability allows VMware to offer a more complete desktop delivery
solution. …The bottom line is that it’s no secret I think this is a brilliant move
on VMware’s part. (In fact I wrote "they might as well buy someone like
ThinStall" in an article last October about whether VMware should focus more on applications.) What a great day in our industry!
Alessandro Perilli at virtualization.info: VMware Acquires Thinstall
Given the strong focus of Thinstall on Microsoft platforms, the
acquisition seems to validate an important point, often emerging in
surveys: large majority of virtual machines contain Windows guest OSes.At the same time this acquition validates once and forever the fact
that application virtualization is considered one the next mainstream
technology for most major players …
