VMware announced today that they have acquired Thinstall.

This is great news for VMware because it means they will be stepping into the application delivery market! Great news for the community because it means that there is now another Virtualization/Application delivery vendor we can go to instead of Citrix. Jay Tomlin, a member of the SBC/Virtualization community even believes this is good news for Citrix. He explains that this will bring what Citrix has been doing for the past couple of years into the spotlight. 

Thinstall in short, virtualizes an application by packaging its executables, dlls, etc into a single package which you can launch. By packaging the whole lot into this package you can merely launch the application and not need to worry about the application working alongside other applications. Each application is completely independant of another.

Lets wait and see what this acquisition will do for us! Below is a copy of the announcement.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 15 - VMware, Inc., the virtualization software leader, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thinstall, a privately-held application virtualization software company headquartered in San Francisco. VMware is acquiring Thinstall to expand its desktop virtualization capabilities which help customers better provision, deploy and update desktop environments. The terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the current fiscal quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed.

"Delivering software applications to an organization's workforce is the single largest cost of desktop administration today," said Jeff Jennings, vice president of desktop products and solutions at VMware. "Thinstall's third generation solution offers the best technological approach in the market for application virtualization, providing faster, easier and more secure delivery of software applications to desktop-based workforces. The addition of Thinstall to our desktop virtualization portfolio will help us to better deliver cost- effective and more flexible tools for quickly and securely provisioning desktops."

Thinstall decouples applications from underlying operating systems, improving isolation and portability for applications across desktop environments.

Thinstall's unique, agentless approach to application virtualization enables the rapid, secure and cost effective delivery of software applications to desktops. Agentless application virtualization, pioneered by Thinstall, requires no pre- installed software on physical or virtual PC's and no new deployment infrastructure or management tools. Thinstall's architecture integrates into existing application management systems to deliver virtualized applications across a variety of operating system versions (NT, 2000, XP, Vista) and enables applications to move with users as needed.

Thinstall significantly decreases the time to value of a software application and reduces the overhead of costly integrations. For example, a large federal agency turned to Thinstall to completely eliminate software installation conflicts that previously ran as high as 20%. The same customer used Thinstall to cut regression testing by 70% as applications no longer had to be tested in every environment or with every other application.

Founded in 1999, Thinstall is used by more than 600 customers in government and commercial industries. Thinstall customers have deployed thousands of virtualized applications to over a million desktops around the world. For more information about Thinstall please visit http://www.vmware.com/go/Thinstall.

"We are pleased to be joining VMware, the industry leader in virtualization,"

said Henrik Rosendahl, CEO at Thinstall. "As organizations continue to standardize on virtualization infrastructure, they are looking to extend the benefits of server virtualization to the desktop. With Thinstall products, VMware customers will be able to reduce virtual desktop deployment time, improve agility and increase administrative flexibility."

VMware Acquires Assets from Foedus

VMware also disclosed its acquisition of services-related assets from Foedus, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based provider of virtualization technologies and services. VMware intends to leverage Foedus's application and desktop virtualization services expertise to help VMware partners expand their virtualization services business. Foedus's remaining assets, including the company's sales and marketing organizations, were acquired earlier this month by GreenPages Technology, a national, consultative IT solutions provider and VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) partner.

About VMware, Inc.

VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. Organizations of all sizes use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California and majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC).

For more information, visit http://www.vmware.com.

VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding expected performance of VMware following completion of the acquisition of THINSTALL and FOEDUS and timing of the completion of the THINSTALL acquisition, including statements related to the anticipated benefits of the acquisitions with respect to VMware's capabilities and ability to deliver cost-effective flexible processes and help customers achieve their objectives. Statements regarding future events are based on the parties' current expectations and are necessarily subject to associated risks related to, among other things, the satisfactory of customary closing conditions and the ability of VMware to successfully integrate THINSTALL's technologies and operations and FOEDUS's assets and to achieve expected benefits. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipate in the forward-looking statements. For information regarding other related risks, please see the "Risk Factors" section of VMware's filings with the SEC, including its most recent filings on Form S-1 and Form 10-Q