VMware was a busy company in 2011. Instead of resting on its laurels, the currently crowned virtualization technology leader continued to be a mover and a shaker -- although not everything went its way.

If there's any doubt VMware continued its virtualization dominance this year, a quick look at their financials puts the issue to rest. According to the third-quarter report in October, VMware's total revenue for the quarter was $942 million, up 32 percent from a year earlier. That's a significant accomplishment in a down economy and with companies like Citrix, Microsoft, and Red Hat gunning to take away virtualization market share.

So how did VMware do it? What moves helped or hurt the company during 2011? And which decisions were a bit cloudy one way or the other?

Let's start with the good.

The launch of vSphere 5
vSphere 5 was a major release for VMware, updating the flagship server virtualization platform with more than 200 new features and improvements over 4.x and keeping VMware ahead of the growing and improving competition from Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as from newcomers Red Hat and Oracle.

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Read the entire InfoWorld Virtualization Report article.