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VMware Ships Desktop Virtualization Broker: Page 2 of 3

One early adopter exemplifies this trend -- Steve Beaver, systems administrator at Florida Hospital, a health care facilities network headquartered in Orlando, Fla. His team had started to look at a third-party broker after installing VMware ESX, but they decided to forgo it when VMware offered VDM in beta for a proof-of-concept project at the hospital. "We couldn't get the third-party connection broker up as quickly," he recalls. "Then when the VMware beta became available, we went with that." It simply made sense to take the broker from the hospital's virtualization supplier.

Beaver isn't using VDM in production yet. But if the trial proves out, the hospital will consider using it to manage 25 to 50 virtual desktop connections to medical transcribers throughout its network.

VDM 2 is sold in two bundles. One, the VMware VDI Starter Edition, contains VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 with VDM. It supports 10 virtual desktops at a list price of $1,500. A second VMware VDI Bundle 100 Pack offers the same elements configured for 100 virtual desktops and costs $15,000. Additional licenses are available in increments of 10 at about $150 per concurrent user.

VMware also offers "a la carte" pricing for VDM 2 for existing VMware customers at $50 per concurrent user.

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