VMWare, riding virtualization wave, buys Thinstall
VMware has acquired San Francisco company Thinstall, which sells a so-called “desktop virtualization technology,” continuing VMWare’s efforts to maintain its leadership position in the hot virtualization arena.
Desktop virtualization is considered the next wave of virtualization. In Thinstall’s case, it lets companies put applications more rapidly on PCs, and then pull them off again without trace. It works by packages up any Windows application and placing it on a PC without actual installation (it run on the PC as a single .exe), so that the host PC gets no files or other data from it. PCs stay cleaner, making it easier for IT professionals to manage the PCs. It decreases security risks too, as employees become more mobile, and move around with laptops with multiple and sometimes conflicting configurations.
Founded in 1999, Install was privately held (we’re not sure it had any venture backing; anyone know?) and counted as customers the US Department of Defense, Intuit, Qualcomm, Lucent, Fujifilm, Northrop Grumman, Morgan Stanley, T-Mobile, and Toshiba.
Stacey Higginbotham has more, listing Endeavors Technologies Kidaro, and InstallFree as Thinstall competitors.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
