VMware + Salesforce = ???

Any new product/partnership announcements from VMware is bound to generate considerable amount of creative predictions from the blogosphere. This time around with VMForce the expectations have been at an all time high, considering that the leaders in IaaS Clouds and SaaS Cloud are making a (mysterious) joint product announcement.

Multiple predictions have been made about the forthcoming announcement:

1. Alessandro picked up evidences from the Google Cache to suspect that Salesforce was going to offer an IaaS Cloud competing with Amazon and Rackspace. This seemed very unlikedly given that VMware already has 700+ Service Providers signed up to offer the vCloud based Cloud Services.

2. VMware execs have been making teaser comments to the media, ensuring the rumour mills kept running at top speed.

3. Alessandra later predicted a Cloudshare type offering with VMware, SpringSource and Salesforce's Force.com PaaS platform.

As analysts and technologists are busy putting forward their ideas, how can I be left behind. Read ahead for potential partnership opportunities between the two giants:

1. Salesforce wants to offer its Salesforce.Com CRM as an application running on on-premise private clouds. Leveraging the VMware vCloud platform, Salesforce can ship a self scaling appliance for customers to install and run on-premise. This offers a win-win solution for both companies and should be adding a new acronym to the over-crowded cloud jargon - on-premise SaaS :)

2. My Boss made a really interesting prediction - that this was something to do with Zimbra and Salesforce. An email service closely tied to Salesforce CRM - a perfect tool for Sales Professionals. A cool way for VMware to take a stab at Microsoft - offering a competitive alternative to Exchange Server. Sounded like an awesome idea, hope Mr. Paul Maritz takes note of this :)

Anyway we will wait till the 27th - but I have serious doubts if this announcement will be able to stand up to the tall expectations it has generated - unless it is some REALLY disruptive technology, something like what my Boss had cooked up.