VMware Inc. deepened its relationship with Intel Corp. on Tuesday, announcing plans to work with the chip maker on optimizing its VMware server product with Intel"s future chip-level virtualization technologies and working to broaden the market"s awareness about the advantages of virtualization.

At Intel"s annual Developer Forum on Tuesday, the companies will show off VMware products working with Intel"s yet-to-be released Vanderpool Technology prototypes. Executives from both companies are expected to tout what the collaborative effort will mean to enterprise-class users.

"We will be demonstrating the first fruits of this relationship as well as our plans to incorporate product line support for VP (Virtual Processor) as VP capabilities emerge in desktop systems and in servers in 2005 and 2006, respectively," said Brian Byun, VMware"s vice president of alliances.

As part of Tuesday"s demonstrations Byun said his company will also emphasize its commitment to offering more robust support for any and all 64-bit operating systems and applications running on Intel x86 architecture, most notably the Windows and Linux environments.

"As users begin to adopt virtualization technologies for a very wide range of workloads and applications, 64-bit technology becomes a very interesting solution. So our message is that whatever 64-bit operating systems are released to market, users can be sure we will support them in our products," said Byun.

"We think virtualization has reached a point of real maturity in the server space and will usher in some interesting applications to enterprise clients such as including increased manageability, improved ease of use, and enhanced security," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel"s Digital Enterprise Group, in a prepared statement.

Besides collaborative product development and support efforts, both companies are drawing up plans for a number of different marketing activities, including advertising, events, and solution centers designed to educate customers on the power of VMware virtual infrastructure on Intel servers and desktops.

"We are going to expand marketing and education around virtualization. The context of that being how do we make the overall acceleration and adoption of virtualization go even faster to where we get to the point the majority, if not all desktop and server based systems, are virtualized," Byun said.

More information about the agreement can be seen at http://www.vmware.com and http://www.intel.com.