Microsoft and Citrix got together Thursday to beat up VMware and warn it off their desktop turf.

They position VMware as a server virtualization company with little skill or interest in the desktop that’s using View, its desktop virtualization product, as a “sweetener to sell server virtualization” and screwing up the customer and the VDI market in the process.

Poor experience with View has purportedly led to stalled VDI implementations and failed pilots so to remove this ostensible logjam that’s delaying the widespread adoption of the virtual desktop Microsoft and Citrix are offering a Cash for Clunkers-style deal officially called Rescue for VMware VDI.

Users covered by Microsoft’s Software Assurance program can trade in 500 VMware licenses for Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft VDI Suite and use the stack for free for the next year. By then, they reason, companies should have figured out their desktop strategy.

Citrix and Microsoft have also concocted a VDI Kick Start program to tempt users new to VDI to try their stuff first by cutting the price of XenDesktop VDI Edition and Microsoft VDI Suite Standard Edition to $28 a user for the first 250 user for a year or a total of $7,000, roughly a 50% discount.

The user gets Hyper-V, App-V and System Center virtual machine manager; and the XenDesktop delivery solution with its HDX high-definition user experience and image management for optimizing storage and the ability to use any device, anywhere, LAN or WAN.

And just to make certain it’s driving its point home, come July 1, the beginning of its fiscal year, Microsoft will be canceling those separate, arcane, headache-inducing $23-a-desktop-a-year VECD or Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop licenses it’s demanded of its Software Assurance customers to access their Windows operating system in a VDI environment.

They’ll also get full roaming rights so they can use their desktops from any device anywhere without paying for each and every widget.

Starting this summer virtual access – even complements of VMware – will be a “Software Assurance benefit.” Unless you’re using thin clients that haven’t paid the Windows tax; if you’re running thin clients or aren’t covered by a Software Assurance plan the best you can expect is a few bucks off the price; instead of $110 a year per device, it’ll be $100.

Microsoft has also fiddled with the Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional and up so it’s no longer dependent on the virtualization technology in the desktop’s chip. It was altogether too confusing, Microsoft admits, and made it hard for people to run their old XP programs on the new operating system, suggesting it could be holding back some Windows 7 upgrades.

Citrix also come away with a new technology deal with Microsoft though it won’t be making any money off of it, well, not directly. Microsoft is going to use the high-definition HDX technology in Citrix XenDesktop to enhance and extend the RemoteFX widgetry that’s supposed to turn up in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, whenever that happens. The Citrix widgetry, however, won’t turn up in the thing until six months after the service pack ships.

RemoteFX, the graphics acceleration for virtual desktops Microsoft got when it bought Calista Technologies and its Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) improvements in 2008, is supposed to make using a virtual desktops and applications an utterly local-style, rich 3D, multimedia experience.

According to independent desktop virtualization maven Brian Madden the RemoteFX-HDX tie-up will make XenDesktop, most of whose deployments are on VMware ESX, more beholden to Hyper-V and give XenDesktop a real reason to run on Hyper-V. Madden figures VMware is working on a PC-over-IP retort.

Microsoft also means to fiddle with the Dynamic Memory in the Service Pack so users can adjust the memory of a guest virtual machine on-demand and maximize server hardware.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Citrix announced a new version of its desktop widgetry XenDesktop 4 Feature Pack 1.

The new release, available March 24, builds on recently announced XenDesktop scalability enhancements, enabling customers to host 100,000 shared virtual desktops concurrently from a single location, shortens virtual desktop and application log-on times up to 5x and simplifies application management by incorporating all the capabilities of the recently announced XenApp 6 as an integrated feature, including seamless new integration with Microsoft App-V and support for Windows Server 2008 R2.