News Releases2 min read

VMware Player Named Most Innovative Software Product of the Year

VMware Player Named Most Innovative Software Product of the Year

PC Professionell Bestows Top Honors on VMware for Second Consecutive Year

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 3, 2006 — VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that PC Professionell, a leading German publication, has named VMware Player the Most Innovative Software Product of the Year. This marks the second consecutive year that VMware has been honored by PC Professionell. VMware ESX Server was named the Most Innovative Network Product in 2005.

"We are impressed with VMware Player because it delivers software innovation and ease of use in a single package," said Jörg Geiger, senior software editor at PC Professionell. "We expect VMware Player to be a springboard for the growth and availability of virtual appliances, which offer the ability to run pre-configured, pre-packaged software in a secure environment and promise to have a significant impact on the IT market over the next year."

VMware Player is a free product that enables anyone to easily run, evaluate and share software in a virtual machine on a Linux or Windows PC. It installs like standard desktop software and runs full 32-bit and 64-bit applications and operating systems, known as virtual machines, in a secure environment, separate from the rest of the user’s PC. VMware Player is ideal for safely running virtual appliances which are ready-to-run software applications, all packaged within virtual machines.

More than 70 virtual appliances have been developed by leading software vendors such as BEA Systems, Check Point, IBM Software, Oracle and Zeus, and open source vendors and communities such as Apache, Asterisk, Debian, FreeBSD, M0n0wall, MySQL, Novell SuSE Linux, OpenBSD, Red Hat Linux, Sguil, Ubuntu Linux and Zimbra. Users can download any of these virtual appliances from the VMware Technology Network (VMTN) at www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/.

"We are very pleased to be receiving this award for VMware Player as it is another excellent endorsement of our technology from a leading publication,” said Dan Chu, senior director of developer products at VMware. “Consecutive wins at the PC Professionell Awards are continued proof of VMware’s technology leadership in the virtualization space and of our ability to continuously innovate. This year’s award is especially pleasing as it acknowledges our commitment to make virtualization a technology that everyone can benefit from."

VMware Player was the first step in an initiative by VMware to make virtualization a pervasive element of future computing environments. VMware Player was made generally available in December of 2005 and has had more than one million downloads. The product is available for immediate download.

About VMware, Inc.

VMware, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC), is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world's largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.vmware.com or call 650-475-5000.


# # #
 

VMware ®is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.