Software company Liquidware Labs previewed a new application for helping organizations plan a move to a VDI infrastructure. Stratusphere Designer can assess usage patterns, identify applications that can work in a VDI environment, compile inventory, and monitor storage use and network quality. Such data will give organizations an accurate feel for how many VDI resources to purchase.

EMC, parent company of VMware, updated its own VNX -- low-cost storage arrays that combine SAN (storage area networks) and NAS (network-attached storage) interfaces -- for View usage. EMC claims that it was able to boot 500 VMware View 5.0 desktops from a VNX array in five minutes, 40 percent more quickly than was possible in View 4.5.

While partners were eager to tout the benefits of VDI and server-side virtualization, VMware competitors also grabbed some show floor to present alternatives to VMware's vision of cloud computing.

Citrix announced that its CloudStack software will now allow users to incorporate VMware vSphere into CloudStack's operations. CloudStack, which Citrix in July with its purchase of Cloud.com, is a Java-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud software platform. By incorporating vSphere support, the software allows organizations to use multiple hypervisors in a single environment and save costs by minimizing their reliance on VMware products, Citrix asserted.

Like Citrix, Microsoft has a booth at the VMworld conference, and was eager to tout its own products as more cost-effective than VMware's. The company had no new products to launch but did comparing the costs of Microsoft and VMware implementations.