VMware management iPad client awaiting approval

VMware users who've been waiting for the promised iPad server management client may soon be able to stop holding their breath. The company has revealed that it's currently in the queue for the App Store and awaiting approval from Apple after originally promising that it would be available by the end of last year. It was promised twice, in fact, including in this YouTube video in which a beta version of the app is demonstrated.

Fredrik Sjöstedt, VMware's director of product and solutions marketing in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, will only say that the vCenter client was handed to Apple "fairly recently," and because of the mysterious ways in which Apple's approval process works, he can't say when it will be made available to users.

The app has been designed from the ground-up to include the features most likely to be useful to IT staff when out and about, but it won't have all the features of the desktop version. It will show the status of a virtual machine and any alerts, and it will have the ability to suspend, stop or restart a virtual machine and show its memory and CPU use.

The new app will follow last week's launch of the View Client for iPad, through which iPad users can access virtual Windows desktops (and, frighteningly, make it look like your iPad is running Windows).