During the first quarter VMware announced and shipped new products and technologies in four key areas: (1) desktop virtualization, (2) datacenter virtualization, (3) management & automation for the datacenter and (4) platform security. VMware announced OEM agreements with four major hardware vendors to pre-install VMware ESXi hypervisor on their servers. To accelerate growth among the more than 25,000 indirect channel partners reselling VMware, the company announced major enhancements to its channel partner programs. This quarter also marked the launch of VMworld Europe, the industry’s first European virtualization conference. Held in Cannes, France, VMworld Europe drew more than 4,500 customers and partners.

• General availability of VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2, which allows users to securely connect to their virtual desktops in the datacenter and gives IT administrators an easy and cost-effective way to manage virtual desktops.
• General availability of VMware Lifecycle Manager a new addition to the company’s portfolio of datacenter management and automation products. VMware Lifecycle Manager enables companies to implement a consistent and automated process for requesting, approving, deploying, updating, and retiring virtual machines.
• The introduction of VMware Stage Manager, a new first-in-class datacenter management and automation product that streamlines and accelerates the process of bringing new or modified applications and other IT services into production. VMware Stage Manager is expected to be generally available this quarter.
• The introduction of VMware Site Recovery Manager, a pioneering product for disaster recovery management and automation. Expected to be generally available this quarter, VMware Site Recovery Manager is designed to make the process of recovering from an entire datacenter outage rapid, reliable, affordable.
• Unveiled two new advances in desktop virtualization that allow organizations to scale virtual desktop deployments to thousands of users at once and let task workers access desktops and applications both online and offline. These features are under development and are expected to be implemented in future VMware products.
• Announced VMware VMsafe™, new security technology endorsed by 20+ security vendors that protects applications running in virtual machines in ways previously not possible in physical environments.
• The acquisition of Thinstall, a leader in application virtualization.
• Introduced the beta version of the VMware application virtualization product, code-named " Project North Star.” Expected to be generally available later this year and based on the acquisition of Thinstall, VMware application virtualization simplifies application deployment and management by reducing the time and effort to test, package, install, and update applications in physical and virtual desktop environments.
• New enhancements to the VMware VIP Channel Partner Program that make it easier for VMware channel partners (now at more than 13,000 strong) to quickly establish and expand virtualization practices.
• VMware took part in nearly 30 partner announcements during the quarter such as BEA’s new client extension to deliver VMware virtualization to enterprise Java environments, a new desktop virtualization solution from Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, and McAfee’s commitment to help advance virtualization security.
• Announcement of the expansion of VMware research and development (R&D) operations in India through a multi-year $100 million investment, a state-of-the-art development center in Bangalore, and a doubling of the company’s engineering organization in India to more than 1,000 people in the next two years.