VMware to acquire software, R&D staff from RTO Software

IDG News Service - VMware has acquired three management tools from RTO Software, and will integrate them into its products for desktop and application virtualization, the company said in a blog posting on Tuesday.

VMware and RTO Software have already had dealings: VMware agreed to integrate RTO Software's Virtual Profiles profile management tool with its VMware View in September last year. However, the RTO's software is "critical enough" that VMware had to buy the company, the blog post said.

RTO Software was founded in 2000 and has 12 employees. The five workers in research and development will now join VMware. Financial details of the deal were not announced.

Of the three products it has acquired, VMware is most interested in Virtual Profiles, a product that handles access to a user's personal data files, settings and application access in virtualized Windows desktop environments.

Features in Virtual Profiles include Live Sync, which can update profiles in real time when a user is running multiple sessions at the same time. If a user creates a new document in one session it automatically pops up in the other one. Virtual Profiles also allows users to download files to their laptop for offline access, and if a user's network connection is dropped, Virtual Profiles automatically saves any modified user profile data locally, according to RTO.

Virtual profiles speeds up access by downloading only the parts of the profile that are used, and speeds up logoffs by saving changes at once, according to VMware.

The company is aiming to put out a version of VMware View that has integrated support for Virtual Profiles technology in mid-2010, according to the blog posting.

VMware has also acquired PinPoint and Discover, which are used for application performance monitoring and to keep track of what hardware and software is running, respectively. These two products will "influence View going forward," according to VMware.

VMware will no longer sell the three products separately, although RTO's customers will get support until contracts expire, according to a Q&A document from VMware.

RTO is left with its first product, TScale, which is used to improve CPU and memory usage in terminal server environments, and is licensed by Citrix.