VMware releases XenApp to Horizon porting tool

VMware has released a tool to migrate apps made virtual and portable by Citrix's XenApp into its own Horizon View product.

The tool is a little bit naughty because VMware has released it as a “Fling” - a term Virtzilla applies to code from its labs that consist of “Apps and tools built by our engineers that are intended to be played with and explored.

VMware doesn't support Flings, but does encourage third parties to come up with ideas for them: a competition for Fling ideas is running as you read this tale.

Releasing XenApp2Horizon, as the new Fling is known, is of course a sign that VMware is trying to prise customers away from Citrix. The latter company has had the remote app delivery and desktop virtualisation (VDI) market more or less to itself for years and VMware is trying to not only win customers away from its rival but cash in on growing interest in VDI and other ways to deliver apps and desktops.

Just how much interest exists is, however, a topic of some conjecture. The Reg's virtualisation desk has spoken to some market watchers who feel that perhaps only five or six per cent of the desktop market is likely to consider or adopt VDI and/or associated app delivery tools. That's still a lot of desktops, but perhaps not the slingshot into new markets VMware wants from its end-user computing push.

Others we've encountered argue that those who will consider VDI are large, heavily-regulated, or both. In other words, just the kind of whale any vendor loves to land.

A third strand of argument suggests that the pool of VDI prospects is expanding as the price of storage – especially all-flash arrays – falls. Targeting VDI is therefore a clever strategy for Virtzilla to pursue.

Conversion tools like this Fling are nothing new and seldom, in your correspondent's experience, spark a stampede. But this one looks significant because most previous VMware Flings are utilities for VMware users. That VMware has decided to let a more contentious piece of code out the door therefore has the sniff of a new resolve to address the end-user computing market. ®