12/1/2010 -- Just in time for the holidays, Cisco Systems Inc. and bosom buddy VMWare Inc. announced the Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solution with VMware View.

The two partners hope that the new offering – which combines VMware's View virtualization technology with preconfigured Unified Computing System (UCS) hardware from Cisco -- will spur the uptake of virtual desktop technology.

There are a lot of reasons why desktop virtualization should be a no-brainer, Cisco and VMware officials argue. For one thing, it promises to deliver a lower overall cost per seat, thanks to the elimination of (some) hardware costs and an improved -- i.e., drastically simplified -- management experience.

Second, Cisco and VMware officials argue that virtual desktop technologies are more flexible and resilient than physical desktop systems: virtual desktops can be allocated --not to mention de-allocated or re-allocated -- in minutes, which permits IT to respond more quickly to the needs of the line of business.

"Our goal wasn't just to combine VMware view and Cisco UCS. Together, we worked to simplify the it infrastructure associated with virtual desktop and application deployments," said Chris Young, vice president and general manager for end user computing with VMware, in a promotional video on Cisco's Web site.

Cisco and VMware also announced two Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs), which Young says are "pre-validated and pre-configured ... designs that integrate the technology and services required for specific use cases."

The new CVDs -- which should become available next month -- introduce support for Cisco's Nexus 1000V, along with storage offerings from VMware parent company EMC Corp. and NetApp.

(NetApp previously partnered with Cisco and VMware to promote a Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture, or SMDA, for cloud computing.)

Cisco spokesperson David McCulloch positions the Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solution with VMware View as a core component of Cisco's  Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) system. The impetus for VXI is obvious, McCulloch maintains. "[T]here has, to date, been a lack of complete systems for desktop virtualization spanning from the data center to the desktop, and that's the principle problem that Cisco's Virtualization Experience Infrastructure addresses," he wrote on the Cisco/VMware blog.
--By Stephen Swoyer