VMware announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thinstall.  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 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 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.

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