VentureBeat

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.