Looking back in time, VMware was one of the only real players in the virtualization space for quite a number of years. Over time, they've made a great name for themselves in the virtualization space and built up a sizeable marketshare. But now that people "believe" in virtualization technology (yes, people used to claim there was some sort of black magic taking place - "this can't be real, can it?"), the party h Looking back in time, VMware was one of the only real players in the virtualization space for quite a number of years. Over time, they’ve made a great name for themselves in the virtualization space and built up a sizeable marketshare. But now that people “believe” in virtualization technology (yes, people used to claim there was some sort of black magic taking place – “this can’t be real, can it?”), the party has gotten much bigger and fairly crowded. VMware has witnessed increased competition, and it’s only going to get hotter. So while everyone attacks the virtualization giant, and VMware continues to attack everyone back – why wouldn’t they spend time going after Parallels with a gimmick to try and get people to switch over, or at least tell their story about switching over in either a video or blog format. Dubbed, “My switch to VMware Fusion” video contest, VMware is asking users to create a video about their switch to VMware Fusion. Switch from what? Parallels for Mac or course, but VMware doesn’t really seem to go into “from what” that much. The winner of the video contest gets an Apple MacBook Air – tricked out with VMware Fusion installed on it of course. Enter and you automatically get a T-shirt and a bumper sticker. What IT person couldn’t use another t-shirt or as I like to call them, office wear.Haven’t switched yet? No problem, VMware is offering a $30 mail-in-rebate incentive to get you to switch from a “competing” product. Oh, and they’ll even offer you a tool to help migrate your virtual machines over to the Fusion format.Parallels and VMware have really been going back and forth with great innovative features on their Mac product lines to try and grab marketshare. So Mac users are the obvious winners here as both products continue to expand their feature list at a fairly quick rate. Want more information on the who, what, where and why? Check out this VMware Web page for more information.Parallels has their own contest running, again with a view from the end user. If you have a great story to tell about your Parallels environment, post it and if selected, you could win a $25 VISA gift card.And me without a Mac. Software Development