In its latest pursuit of SMBs VMware has cut a deal for Intel to sell vSphere 4 with its board and Xeon 5500 system products to resellers and system integrators that service small and mid-sized businesses starting in Q4.

This relationship apparently expands on the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (ESAA) certification agreement previously signed by the companies.

VMware is said to be the preferred brand by 64% of surveyed SMBs and preferred by three times as many surveyed SMBs as the next closest competitor, according to a blind market virtualization study published in April of 416 IT professionals in North America and Europe conducted by Management Insight Technologies.

vSphere 4 packages for SMBs deliver differentiated functionality and reportedly lower the entry point for customers new to virtualization.

Companies with fewer than 20 physical servers can deploy a server consolidation and management solution for $166 a processor with vSphere 4 Essentials, and can get higher application uptime with vSphere 4 Essentials Plus for $499 a processor, features that are supposedly otherwise out of reach for most small companies.

VMware claims vSphere 4 Essentials Plus is the only virtualization solution that provides high availability and data protection at this price point. vSphere 4 Advanced delivers an even more robust and scalable business continuity solution and includes Fault Tolerance, VMotion and vShield Zones.

Intel's global reseller community includes 50,000 Premier and Associate members.