When you thought about virtualization, you thought about VMware and no one else. That’s changing now, as Microsoft, Citrix and others chip away in the hypervisor market.

And when you thought about VMware, you thought virtualization and nothing else. That too is changing now, as today’s VMforce news shows.

We’ve been hearing it for a while now: VMware doesn’t want to be just a virtualization company anymore. Well, that day is finally here. Still, VMforce has got to mean something for virtualization, right?

At first glance, a lot of people would say no. VMforce is a Java application development and hosting platform, and it’s not really something that admins will come across in their day-to-day duties. As blogger and systems engineer Kendrick Coleman said to me on Twitter this morning, “It means nothing to me because I’m not a developer.”

VMware CEO Paul Maritz shares a different view. He said in this morning’s VMforce press release that VMforce will tie in with the private and hybrid cloud models that many businesses are considering. Sure, the whole part about VMforce being a “dramatically simplified solution for modern application development” isn’t going to excite many admins.

But then there’s the part about applications that “can scale automatically. VMforce customers will not have to worry about scaling up app servers, databases or infrastructure to meet performance demand.” Now we’re cookin’ with virtualization gas!

Scalability is one of the biggest benefits of virtualization. If you want to deploy a new application, you can simply provision a new VM instead of rolling out a whole new physical server. Of course, there are some potential gotchas. If you provision VMs left and right, you can find yourself with a serious case of VM sprawl. And despite workarounds like memory overcommit, you’re still limited to the physical capabilities of your infrastructure.

If you’re an admin who has dealt with these kinds of problems, especially with a lot of your custom apps, don’t ignore the VMforce news. With this Platform as a Service model, the service provider is responsible for meeting your users’ demand — which means you don’t have to worry about provisioning and decommissioning VMs or overloading your servers.

Is VMforce going to change the world for admins? No. But it may be able to help solve some problems. VMware isn’t solely focused on virtualization anymore. We shouldn’t be either.

I used to hate the term “cloud computing” — like, in a “I totally despise this phrase and will go to the ends of the Earth to avoid using it” kind of way. I thought it was another meaningless phrase, ripped from the marketing-ese dictionary to generate hype.

But over time I realized I was fighting a losing battle, and that cloud computing was catching on — not just as a term, but as an actual IT strategy. And as an added bonus, it relies on everyone’s favorite technology, virtualization!

It still seems a little silly to say something is in “the cloud,” like it’s this magical, ethereal place, when it’s really just someone’s else data center (or even your own, if we’re talking about private cloud). But whatever, I can deal with it.

So imagine my dismay when I started reading about today’s Salesforce.com and VMware news, and I saw a new buzzword staring me in the face: “Cloud 2.” I felt like kneeling down, looking up to the heavens as rain poured down, and screaming, “WHY?!?!?!?!?”

Unless you’ve been living in a cave (the opposite of a cloud), you know that Salesforce.com and VMware announced VMforce today. Basically, VMforce is a Java development platform, hosted in the cloud. The major components are the Spring platform, which VMware acquired last year, and Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. And the goal is to get developers building social, mobile and collaborative applications for businesses and organizations.

These are the so-called “Cloud 2 apps,” as Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff called them in the press release. I understand the companies want to set themselves apart from the rest of the cloud crowd (try saying “cloud crowd” three times fast, by the way), but when you look at it, they’re APPS developed and run in the CLOUD. Let’s just call them “cloud apps” and spare everyone another buzzword.