As usual, VMworld is generating tons of news and product announcements from companies in the virtualization and cloud space. This week there's a smattering of announcements that are worth checking out.

Let's start with the MokaFive announcement on Tuesday about 12-minute desktop virtualization. Yesterday the company demonstrated the MokaFive Suite 3.7, which includes a simplified installer for streamlining VDI deployments.

The whole point of having a virtual desktop infrastructure is so you can move your office wherever it needs to be, and access it through whatever you can carry with you. And the whole point of unified communications (UC) is so you can integrate all the information and voice traffic you receive into a single console. The problem up to now is that it's been hard (maybe not impossible, but hard) to do both - to stream the voice traffic from the UC system to the virtual desktop using channels made for the job, so your conversations don't sound like synthesizer effects, and so your performance doesn't go down like a Miley Cyrus concert.

At VMworld in Las Vegas this week, VoIP provider Mitel is making a splash with the first genuine hard-wiring of UC with VDI. The result is no less than a virtual desktop phone which not only becomes mobile, but can effectively be rerouted... to one of those mobile phones you've been reading about.

Acronis is trying to make things easier for SMBs to make backups of their VMs, announcing v6.0 of their vmProtect, which is actually a new product. In our story on VM backup technologies earlier this summer, we mentioned several different vendors and their solutions. Despite this collection of products, more than 40 percent of SMBs in the US are NOT backing up their virtual servers, according to the Acronis Disaster Recovery Index.

Next week Quest Software will announce a slew of new virtual management tools that complement its existing software management offerings. There are new versions of VDI managers, virtual capacity management tools, and a free software download too.

VMworld is one of those conferences that you really feel like a rookie the first time you go. It is such a huge event.

Last year, the event attracted about 12,000 people. The VMware team expected to attract 14,000 people for this year's event. When all was said and done, the user event turned industry conference attracted more than 17,000 people. A total of 85 countries were represented. VMworld will continue Oct. 12-14 in Copenhagen.

We're doing a wrap up of VMworld and we want to know what you thought were the hot trends of the conference.

We have a few thoughts of our own, but what do you think were some of the most significant developments that emerged?

VMworld set up a lab this year that ran a hybrid cloud.

The VMware team set up a data center at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco that connected to public clouds provided by Terremark in Miami, Florida and Verizon in Ashburn, Virginia.

Service providers are a lynchpin in VMware's strategy to extend its virtualization technology into the cloud.

If the strategy works, VMware could become the leader in providing hybrid cloud infrastructures. It's a test for VMware's new foray into the cloud. And it has its risks. VMware is looking to provide an end-to-end platform that extends from the enterprise data center to the public cloud environments managed by the service providers.

How the technology performs will come to define VMware's position in the vast network of service providers that work with the majority of enterprise customers.

Is a cloud utopia possible? The idea being that someday everything will be elastic. Services scale up and down based on usage. You would never have to worry about updating an application on your laptop. Security would be taken care of and devices would be smart enough to know what data to process and what should be rendered in the cloud.

Sure. We are already seeing some of these scenarios unfold. But it's not common. In reality, the builder has a big job ahead.

Intel is here at VMWorld with a message about how this plays out. In their view, as also illustrated on the Intel Cloud Builder site, it comes down to three factors. The cloud and correlating devices should be federated, automated and client-aware.

Follow our coverage as we report live from VMworld, the industry's largest virtualization conference, August 30 through September 2 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Hear directly from our sponsors, VMware and Intel as they share their vision and solutions for virtualization and cloud computing. If you are attending in person, don't miss Intel's Supersession on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., "Virtualization Transitions: the Journey to Enterprise Cloud Computing".