VMware isn't only in the clouds, it's still on your desktop as well. The company just released new versions of VMware Workstation 6.5 and VMware ACE 2.5 to market. While everything at VMworld 2008 seemed to center around the datacenter and the “cloud,” VMware quietly launched two new versions of its desktop virtualization products yesterday: VMware Workstation 6.5 and ACE 2.5.In addition to expanding on the already impressive list of supported guest operating systems, Workstation 6.5 adds a host of new features and functionality. Some of the key features include the following: — Unity mode: A feature first found in VMware Fusion. Integrate your favorite guest applications with your host. — Accelerated 3-D graphics support on Windows XP guests: Workstation 6.5 virtual machines now work with applications that use DirectX 9 accelerated graphics with shaders up through Shader Model 2.0 on Windows XP guests. — More powerful record/replay of VM execution activity: It records full system behavior, including all CPU and device activity. — Virtual machine streaming: First seen at VMworld 2007 during the keynote address, it allows you to download a virtual machine from a Web server and power it on without waiting for the download to complete. The download can even be paused and then later restarted. You can find out more about VMware Workstation 6.5 in the release notes.On the other side of the desktop, VMware also created its ACE product, which was designed as a comprehensive enterprise solution so that organizations could provision and roll out standardized client PCs into their environment. These machines would be secure and could be centrally managed. VMware ACE 2.5 includes a number of product enhancements. ACE is all about security, so they’ve made updates and enhancements that include a kiosk mode that keeps users from accessing the host system. It also has built-in keystroke-logging detection that can notify end-users or it can automatically exit the virtual machine and log the event. And the usability of the product has also been made easier. Things are now more intuitive and simpler when creating ACE instances. The concept of an ACE master has been removed in favor of simply enabling ACE features for a virtual machine. And networking configuration has also been improved, making it easier for someone to configure the environment when multiple network adapters are found. You can find out more about VMware ACE 2.5 in the release notes. Software Development