After being in beta a little over four months, Vmware today has announced the general availabitly of VMware Desktop Manager 2 (VDM). For those of you that are unfamiliar with  VMware's core VDI product: VDM is VMware's VDI Broker. It is a web-based desktop management server that connects users to virtual desktops. An obvious, important strong suit of VDM2 is it's  tight integration with Vi 3.5. The full feature is as follows (quoting VMware website):

End-to-end Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Functionality

• Central administration of desktops from any location: Manage virtual desktops in a data center where you can more easily perform upgrades, patches and desktop maintenance.
• Scalable management: Store and manage thousands of virtual desktops on hundreds of physical servers from a single management console.
• Streamlined provisioning: Deploy new desktops in minutes instead of days or weeks using automatic desktop provisioning.
• Desktop isolation: Give each end user an isolated virtual desktop and help to eliminate the availability and performance problems associated with shared application technologies.

Simplified & Secure Desktop Management & Provisioning with VMware VDM

• Desktop management: Deploy VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) to manage connections between remote users and centralized virtual desktops.
• Flexible provisioning: Deploy individual desktops for each user or create persistent and non-persistent desktop pools.
• Strong network security: Protect sensitive corporate information, using SSL tunneling to ensure that all connections are completely encrypted.
• Complete integration with Microsoft Active Directory: Control access to centralized desktops using your existing directory services infrastructure.
• Failure redundancy: Enable a high level of fault tolerance for your virtual desktop infrastructure with robust technology for connection redundancy and reliability.
• Support for strong authentication: Strengthen access control through support of two-factor authentication using RSA SecurID.

Familiar End-user Experience

• Application compatibility: Run off-the-shelf, legacy or custom applications with no modifications.
• No end-user training required: Deliver complete, unmodified desktop environments to end users.
• Flexibility: Provide end users with their own desktop that they can customize to suit their needs and access from anywhere, or provision desktops that are more restricted and revert to a known consistent state upon log-off.
• Access to local devices: Allow users to access local printers, USB devices and other peripherals.

Seamless Integration with VMware Infrastructure 3

• Unified management of servers and desktops: Use a common management interface for administration of desktops and servers throughout your virtual infrastructure.
• Consolidated backup: Provide centralized backup for virtual desktops while helping to eliminate backup traffic from your network to improve performance.
• Automated failover and recovery: Make it easier to keep desktops running even when server hardware goes down, and recover quickly from natural disasters and unplanned outages.
• Dynamic load balancing: Help balance desktop computing resources automatically as user needs and application loads change over time.

Probably these features are nothing new. The pricing however does provide some interesting information:

• $150 per concurrent user (this includes Vi 3.5 see below)
• Bundled with Vi Enterprise Edition for VDI (?). There are two editions: the "Starter Edition" and the "Bundle 100 Pack"
• Starter Edition: $1,500 for 10 virtual desktops
• Bundle 100 Pack: $15,000 for 100 virtual desktops
• If you already have Vi 3.5 then you can buy VDI (VDM) licenses for $50 per concurrent user. 

These are of course list prices but you get the idea. So are we shocked? Or are we pleased? I'm a bit torn. $50 isn't that expensive if you just look at the price. I think it all depends on what you are buying for that 50 bucks. What you are buying is the VDM component (per concurrent user). Is that worth the 50 bucks? To be honest, from what I've seen I was not thoroughly impressed with VDM2 (although I did not do an in-depth review). Citrix seems to have a good answer with XenDesktop Server 2.0 (pricing unknown to me). Provision Networks might even have an even better answer with the Virtual Access Suite 5.9 (also $50)

How will this turn out? I think it depends heavily on the success of Hyper-V. Why? VDM2 is going to be very attractive to existing VMware customers. The longer it takes for Microsoft to deliver a decent hypervisor, the more customers to go for Vi 3.5 and chances are they are probably going for VDM2 to fit their VDI needs. So if the upcoming Hyper-V releases is not what customers are expecting, I think this will be (more) food on the virtual table of VDM2. I also believe the added value of a hypervisor (albeit VMware, Citrix or Microsoft) will quickly ware off because it will become commodity and then the quality of the VDI (broker) products becomes of even more paramount importance.