CIOL: Who are the key players in server virtualization space?

SR: The market, both in India and overseas, is multi-tiered. There are a group of virtualization platform providers, who offer the software layer that allows guest virtual machines to run on a host physical server. The list of platform providers includes Citrix (which acquired XenSource), Microsoft, VMWare (acquired by EMC), Parallels (known as SWsoft earlier), Sun Microsystems (Sun xVM), and the open source platform kvm.

Apart from the platform vendors, a plethora of point solution companies also exist, and the platform vendors offer a good portfolio of point solutions themselves (this is particularly true for VMWare, which has been around for much longer than others in the virtualization space).

There are a number of tools that enable specific management tasks in the virtual infrastructure. This includes a host of tasks including dynamic provisioning of VMs, creating images out of a gold standard, virtual machine transitions across physical and virtual servers (all permutations, P2V, V2P), high availability features, re-configuring a VM in a particular platform to a VM in another platform, among many others.

In addition, there are many niche categories that address critical requirements such as tools that help back-up virtual servers: Prominent in this space are specialized back-up vendors, such as Acronis, IT management vendors such as Symantec, and VMware. Also, there are analytics tools that help decide what to virtualize. A prominent vendor in this space is CiRBA.

CIOL: Who are the major vendors of desktop/endpoint virtualization?

SR: All prominent server virtualization platform providers provide desktop virtualization platforms as well. VMWare provides View 3, Citrix provides the Citrix XenDesktop. In addition, there exist a few point solution providers, and a few hardware providers:

1. Thin clients, Wyse are a prominent vendor in this category.

2. Tools that optimize a few key aspects of desktop virtualization, such as tools for brokering connections between end points and the server hosted virtual machines, such Leostream Connection Broker. Another example is tools for copying desktop images for a standard image, such as VMware's View Composer.

3. Application virtualization solutions, prominent here is Microsoft Application Virtualization (technology acquired through the 2006 acquisition of SoftGrid), Altiris SVS (now Symantec SVS), VMware's ThinApp, among others.
 
4. Presentation virtualization solutions. Citrix (Citrix XenApp) is the prominent vendor in this category. 
In addition to the aforementioned, plenty of niche tools populate the market. For example, RES PowerFuse provides a 'workspace' that presents a desktop environment combining locally installed applications, terminal server delivered applications, and virtualized applications, complete with custom OS and application settings to the user.

The end effect is a desktop environment that is indistinguishable from a completely customizable locally installed one, but one that combines multiple end point virtualization technologies to deliver the right application portfolio. AppSense is another vendor that provides user customization capabilities. Such tools could be crucial in gaining user acceptance.