VMware Fusion 2 Released

During its first year on the market, the very popular VMware Fusion won over a dozen industry awards, including the impressive MacWorld Editor’s Choice Award and membership in PC World’s 100 Products of 2008.

This upgrade, VMware Fusion 2 is free for all VMware Fusion 1.x users. It adds over one hundred new enhancements and features, offering Mac users even more integrated Windows-on-Mac experience, presented in a user-friendly package which can be appreciated by Mac users at any level of technical ability. VMware Fusion 2 also makes running Windows on your Mac even safe, while amplifying more of that raw power of VMware’s virtualization technology for those more tech-savvy users.

Pat Lee, group manager for consumer products, VMware, stated in a press release, “VMware Fusion 2 makes it easy and fun for every Mac user to run the Windows applications they need while enjoying the Mac experience they want. Our goal is to break down the walls between Windows and the Mac by creating a user-friendly, Mac-native experience that lets our customers run any Windows application, seamlessly and safely, on the Mac. We want our customers to see that Windows really is better on the Mac.”

Individual consumers obviously benefit from being able to run Windows on their Macs; organizations are starting to see those benefits, too. Michael Rose, researcher at IDC, in a press release, stated, “With technologies available today, like VMware Fusion, ’switching’ to a Mac by individuals within organizations, whole departments or even across the entire company, is more conceivable because it allows users to adopt Apple hardware and software, while enabling the continued use of Windows applications and their associated management infrastructure.”

The ability to run Windows applications alongside Mac applications gives all kinds of organizations the ability to switch to Apple computers.”VMware Fusion is a perfect fit for us,” said Jason Pelletier, computer labs manager from Bowdoin College. “Our students love it because it gives them access to Windows-only applications they need for classes, including software that comes with textbooks. Our faculty and staff love it because they can use their preferred Mac platform and still access Windows-based apps with just a few mouse clicks. And it’s great for our computer labs, because we get to use one type of hardware which can run any app our users need-Mac, Windows, Linux, and more. VMware Fusion is extremely reliable and delivers outstanding performance - it has been a great win for the school overall.”

VMware Fusion 2 builds on the award-winning VMward Fusion 1.x, applying close to ten years of its desktop virtualization technology, to now offer even more advanced Mac virtualization software. Running smoothly and seamlessly within OS X, Windows applications feel like native applications. Launch any Mac file with any Windows application, share folders and data between the two — there is really no barrier to what you can do.

The new version now makes it safer to run Windows on the Mac with an embedded complimentary 12-month subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus.

Anders Bylund of The Motley Fool writes, “Because Fusion is targeted to a specific host platform — Mac OS X — and its very specific set of Intel hardware, it’s a lean and mean virtual machine with great performance and an ever-slicker user experience. VMware Workstation and Server are built to work on a range of different hardware/software platforms, so it’s harder to make them as efficient or as easy-to-use as Fusion is.”

As Bylund points out, VMware Fusion is not the only virtualization option available for Mac users. There are offerings from both Parallels and Sun Microsystems. But, he says, they “lack much of the spit-shine and performance of Fusion. And the backup-friendly snapshots bring VMware’s product to a whole new level of appeal to the business world. And it’s dragging Apple’s user-friendly computers right along with it. Last year, Microsoft’s business software division made more than $15 billion on enterprise sales last year. Apple and VMware look ready to steal a sliver of that rich, creamy cash pie.”