It's time for another round of desktop virtualization news – they're mostly based on my news feeds, so if I do miss somethin – please take the time to let me know!

Acquisitions

• IBM is to acquire Transitive via InformationWeek
  I'm really impressed with the flexibility Transitive gives you: it's a cross-platform virtualization solution, which in my experiments allowed an x86 Solaris-based system to run a SPARC Solaris environment. This is extremely useful when you need to support old third-party solutions but your hardware is irreversibly growing old. I understand IBM already uses Transitive's solutions, so it's quite a logical step for both companies.
• TechTarget Acquires The Brian Madden Company via VMblog
  TechTarget have quite a portfolio of websites and events around virtualization, and surely the desktop virtualization angle brought by Brian Madden will make a great addition.

VMware News

• VMware Convertor 4 public beta 1 (you will need your VMTN account to access it though)
  New release of VMware Convertor brings the long-awaited support for VM conversion of Linux systems (RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu) and Windows Server 2008. The list of supported third-party image formats had been substantially updated to support the latest versions of products. Flexibility in VM configuration would allow for a smooth workflow when doing P2V on larger scale.
• VMware Referrals program
  If you love VMware products and want to earn something for introducing someone to them, it's going to be much easier to do with the just announced referrals program: VMware @ TellAPal

Virtualization Software news

• Wyse updates their virtualization software suite
  Quite a few directions have been successfully explored and covered in the most recent update of software suite by Wyse: USB Virtualizer, Multi-display and Rich Sound are the modules added to ensure the delivery of a more integrated solution. In terms of typical desktop user productivity, I would say that RIch Sound (bi-directional audio over RDP) is the most significant improvement – I hear this as one of the main complains from customers when it comes to various desktop virtualization solutions and particularly remote access to virtual desktops sessions.