VMware acquires virtualisation start-up

Beefs up desktop portfolio.

VMware on Tuesday added a significant management piece to its end-user computing portfolio by acquiring desktop virtualisation startup Wanova.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Wanova's flagship product, Mirage, centralises image management by using layering technology in the data centre. Mirage blends elements of client and server virtualisation, giving IT departments full control over endpoints while allowing users to customise their machines as they see fit.

VMware is planning to integrate Mirage with View, its own desktop virtualisation product. Mirage's ability to centrally manage both physical and virtual PCs, regardless of whether they're connected to the network, is seen in the channel as an important addition to the VMware portfolio.

VMware View images run on servers in the data centre and use the PCoIP remote display protocol for the user interface, but Wanova Mirage images are transmitted and cached locally for runtime execution on the client systems, Scott Davis, CTO of VMware's End User Computing group, said in a blog post.

"Wanova Mirage broadens our EUC offerings by bringing many of the operational and centralised management benefits associated with VMware View to laptops and physical systems," Davis wrote. "This means both native user experience through local execution and disconnected access."

Wanova is seeking patents for a number of its network and storage capacity optimisation technologies, and last July obtained a patent that covers centralised management of the primary copy of each PC image as well as the synchronisation of user data in between.

VMware has been stepping up its focus on end-user computing, and last month unveiled View 5.1, which includes features that ease performance bottlenecks and cut storage costs in VDI environments.

This article originally appeared at crn.com