As part of VMblog's live VMworld 2014 coverage coming up next month, we're getting our schedule ready to learn as much as we can, as quickly as we can.  The event is always jam packed with information coming in from every which way, so it is important to come up with a good game plan to try and follow as best you can throughout the event.  And part of our game plan will be to walk the exhibitor show floor and meet with as many vendors as possible.  And one of those must see vendors on my list is HotLink.

We kicked off the second general session (day 2) today at VMworld 2013, with VMware president and COO, Carl Eschenbach, taking command of the stage in the absence of show fan favorite and former CTO of VMware, Steve Herrod. Big shoes to fill.

Carl kicked things off announcing what many of us already figured out due to the lack of wifi and seating at the event -- there are more than 22,500 people in attendance of the show this year, way up from the 1,400 that joined VMware at the very first show back in San Diego 10 years ago. Of course, Carl likes to round up, so he claims 23,000 attendees. Either way, attendance is up from the previous year and it shows. Many asked on Twitter if the show was in fact getting "too big."

BackupAgent, the leading provider of cloud backup software for service providers, has been awarded as Parallels Technology Partner of the Year. Parallels CEO Birger Steen announced BackupAgent as winner of the prestigious award at the Parallels Fourth Annual Partner Awards, held on the Parallels Summit that takes place on February 4-6 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced that small and medium business (SMB) adoption of cloud services from its partners using Parallels Automation and the Application Packaging Standard (APS) grew by more than 80 percent in 2012. This growth was fueled by SMBs who are now using an average of four cloud applications each, along with more than 50 percent of the top 30 global telecommunications providers now using the Parallels cloud service delivery platform. This is in addition to the 9,000 service providers and more than 50,000 web designers and developers also using the company’s software to serve millions of SMBs.

Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced the recipients of the Fourth Annual Parallels Partner Awards. Parallels CEO Birger Steen recognized thirteen companies during Parallels Summit 2013, which is being held in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. Parallels Partner Awards recognize outstanding yearly achievements by partners who make the best use of the assets Parallels provides, with special attention given to those partners who have innovated and differentiated in the rapidly-expanding small and medium business (SMB) cloud services market.

Ravello Systems today announced the public beta of its service which enables developers to overcome their internal data center capacity constraints and leverage the unlimited resources of the public cloud to develop and test their applications faster and in a more robust manner. Ravello instantly enables developers to replicate their existing applications, without any changes, and deploy them to any public or private cloud.

With its first firmware release of the year, IGEL Technology is issuing a comprehensive update of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for all models in its UD3, UD5 and UD9 series running Windows Embedded Standard 7. This support for Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 8.0 will allow users to take immediate advantage of the many new features that Microsoft has introduced with the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

PHD Virtual Technologies, a pioneer in virtual machine backup and recovery, and innovator of virtualization monitoring solutions, announced today the appointment of virtualization and cloud expert, Roger Baskerville, as Vice President of Europe the Middle East and Africa.

Asigra Inc., a leading Cloud Backup, recovery and restore (BURR) software provider since 1986 today announced it will demonstrate cloud-based backup and recovery at the 2013 Parallels Summit in booth #519. This year's show takes place February 4-6 and is being held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. During the exhibition, Asigra will showcase groundbreaking backup and recovery capabilities for cloud service providers that leverage Parallels Application Packaging Standard (APS). Innovations to be shown include low-touch agentless deployment and operation, simple management of end-to-end physical/virtual/cloud/endpoint data backup, virtual machine disaster recovery and NIST FIPS 140-2 certified security for data in flight and at rest.