Citrix Systems has managed to position itself quite well in the VDI market to date, gaining a sizable customer base while doing so. VMware is taking a shot at Citrix’s market share, though that may prove to be difficult.

In the past few months, VMware has made a number of acquisitions to support its VDI strategy: that includes Zimbra, SlideRocket and the virtualization giant’s most recent acquisition, Socialcast. Combined with VMware’s Horizon App Manager and its partnership with Google regarding Chrome OS all these parts make it clear that it has some serious goals around VDI.

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan however highlighted that for once, Citrix – which was a headline partner at Google’s Chromebook launch event – has been around much longer.

“The problem for VMware is that Citrix has been on the desktop as a virtualization play well before it was cool. Now Citrix is leveraging that experience in bringing the Windows environment to thin clients to expand into mobile.”

Citrix had a head start, launching its Receiver app shortly after the iPad was introduced. On the flip side of the coin though, VMware is a dominant presence in the backend datacenter architecture space – a status Citrix is still far from obtaining.

VDI is gaining traction, as well as real interest from the direction of CIOs, IT managers and analysts. Tal Klein, Director of Technical Marketing at Citrix, detailed further on the customer’s perspective when he sat down at theCube during Citrix Synergy 2011. In addition to just holding this major conference a few weeks ago, the company also just announced the biggest update to its HDX technology yet.

Over at EMC, CEO Joe Tucci made it clear that VMware is not up for grabs just yet. When asked if there is a chance EMC would sell its majority stake of VMware, his response was “no way!,” even if a potential buyer would offer a 50 percent premium.