Lenovo made a splash at this week’s VMworld 2013 conference with a cost-effective private cloud reference architecture for small- and medium-sized (SMB) businesses. The newly announced specification marries EMC’s Intel-based VNX storage systems with 2U ThinkServers from Lenovo to “reduce capital expenditure through higher utilization, simplified cabling and fewer network connections.” Customers can choose to virtualize their environments using either vSphere or Hyper-V.

“Lenovo ThinkServer as a core component of a validated VSPEX architecture, specifies leading virtualization, server, and network technology to create a complete virtualization solution that enables SMBs to spend less time and money on IT infrastructure and more time on their business,” said Darrel Ward the vice president of Lenovo’s Enterprise Product Group. “SMBs and channel providers will benefit from Lenovo’s VSPEX private cloud solutions, which are designed to scale and perform in a simple-to-deploy, single rack.”

Lenovo is going on the offensive in both the enterprise and consumer space. The Chinese hardware behemoth recently beat out Hewlett Packard as the world’s biggest PC vendor by units sold, a lead that management is determined to maintain.

Last week, Lenovo announced that all of its Windows 8.1 laptops will ship with Pokki, a piece of software that offers an alternative to the native app marketplace and Start Menu. The free tool replaces the menu with an unobtrusive acorn-shaped icon that only appears when users hover the mouse over it. Once clicked, the button loads a task switcher that lets you toggle between the start screen and your currently running apps.

The Pokki Start Menu is joined by a catalog of over four million desktop applications, including Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest and Pandora. The marketplace poses a threat to the Windows Store, which offers a much smaller selection of apps.