"We needed to eat our own dog food," says Javier Soltero, CTO of SaaS and Application Services at VMware.

VMware was born on the idea of desktop virtualization, but its server virtualization technologies really put it on the map. It has since added cloud infrastructure management and a cloud applications platform to its portfolio. Now it's taking a much more expansive view of desktop virtualization with a vision it calls End-User Computing that encompasses extending its middleware to all end-user devices in the enterprise, especially smartphones and tablets.

"We're focused on filling in the part beyond desktop virtualization and truly delivering solutions that offer knowledge workers and end-users more broad, secure, manageable ways to leverage mobility," Soltero says.