Many of the partner announcements, from companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and EMC, were for products that augmented VMware's new software; others were for products and services that compete directly with VMware.

At the conference, VMware of View VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) software, which streams operating systems to client machines. It also unveiled an updated Horizon, a portal that allows VDI users to easily download and install new applications from a central repository.

On the server side, VMware released version 5 of vSphere cloud management software, . The company also to its vFabric set of cloud application tools.

In a keynote at VMworld Tuesday, Stephen Herrod, VMware's chief technology officer, detailed how all these products could work together in an integrated infrastructure, one that would free applications and data from any one platform or end-user device. "It should be all about people. There is not one place I go, or one machine I go to. So it really should be about the applications and data. I want to get access to get specific apps that I want and I want to get data from wherever I am," he said.

For users who want to jump into virtualization in a big way, Hewlett-Packard has assembled of hardware and software, called HP VirtualSystem, built to run a VMware-based operation. It includes HP FlexFabric network equipment, HP 3Par and LeftHand storage gear, and HP BladeSystem servers. Built around VMware's vCenter Server software, the package also includes HP Insight Control to help administrators troubleshoot and manage vCenter.