Tod:
I'm going to have to say VMware Fusion. This might be because I actually worked on VMware Fusion, doing the UI as well as being a member of the only Mac team at VMware. My personal preferences aside there are some very serious reason Parallels is not a product you should be using for government business.
1. Parallels is actually based and coded in Russia. Much of the code used was taken from various other projects that are questionable legally.
2. Parallels is a qt-app, meaning it's not a true Cocoa application. In that sense it's a really, really poor port and not native, clean Mac application.
3. It's full of hacks and bugs because of the qt-app status. It doesn't use apple's proper libraries and doesn't take proper advantage of multiple processors.
4. When running windows or other OSes it actually Modifies the virtual disk, so that your window serial or registration doesn't think it's now on another machine. If you were to shut down or crash there is a good chance you can corrupt the entire virtual disk file. This is just bad practice, but it's the only way they can do it because of their "hacked" virtualization.
5. VMware Fusion was written from the ground up using modern Apple tools. The team is small, inside of a large company "the next google" that does nothing but virtualization. The team consists of ex-apple employees and people who have extreme mac experience.
6. VMware's virtual disc format is open-source, and has been around for a long period of time. It's been tried and proven, and there are products for all platforms.
7. Consider the fact that the IT Director? for the Marines is planning to use VMware virtualization for all their military systems starting next year.
8. Many, many government agencies are already using VMware because it's been security hardened and VMware works hard to improve based on feedback.
9. Some of those agencies that I know of: DoD, NSA, CIA, Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, and lots of Federal agencies that aren't just intelligence or military.
10. VMware Fusion for mac will be much more stable as it's a native cocoa application, works properly with 64bit, AND DOES NOT write INTO your virtual disk for registration like Parallels does. This to me would be a huge concern for business.
11. VMware uses SMP, supports 64bit and so much more, and VMware will work closely with federal agencies.
12. I can probably hook you up with some demo licenses or put you in contact with someone to give detailed hands on showing of the features between Parallels and Fusion.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Best Regards,
Court Kizer