VMware Delivers New Operations Model for Cloud Environments with VMware vCenter Operations

VMware to Integrate Performance, Capacity and Configuration Analytics to Streamline Management of Intelligent Virtual Infrastructure

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 8, 2011 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced a strategy and a new solution to simplify and automate how IT organizations manage services in dynamic virtual and cloud environments. VMware vCenter™ Operations will help customers transform IT operations to achieve the agility and economics of cloud computing.

Cloud computing represents a fundamentally different approach to IT where resources are pooled across multiple sources, provisioning and capacity are highly dynamic, and configurations are fluid. Traditional management tools and processes, which were designed to handle discrete processes across static computing stacks, cannot keep pace with the velocity of these new, intelligent virtual environments.

“For opportunistic organizations, the move to cloud computing may enable the 'breaking' of the traditional IT management model," said Cameron Haight, research vice president, Gartner. "Decades of investment in complex infrastructures, processes and management tools have contributed to high IT operations and service delivery costs. Cloud computing, or more specifically, the cloud operating model, represents a real opportunity for enterprise IT to overcome the complexity that has been dragging down overall IT efficiency and agility. But to do this, we need to completely reassess the conventional wisdom of the role of management in relation to the build-out of these emerging cloud environments.”

VMware vSphere^® has helped thousands of companies transform their datacenters, simplifying many core systems management functions, such as resource allocation and load balancing, by building them into the virtualization platform. VMware’s management strategy is to further simplify IT by integrating performance, capacity and configuration management and applying analytics to help customers achieve the degree of automation required to operate a cloud environment.

“IT management is being turned on its head as enterprises expand their virtual infrastructures to achieve improved efficiencies and responsiveness,” said Ramin Sayar, vice president product strategy, enterprise management, VMware. “Increasingly, our customers are realizing that a management model designed for yesterday’s IT systems is making it difficult to keep up with the demands of today’s business environment. We believe VMware vCenter™ Operations will help our customers modernize their operations and take the next step in the journey toward a more simplified, agile approach to IT.”

Visibility, Analytics and Actionable Intelligence Drive New IT Management Approach

vCenter Operations will be tightly integrated with VMware vSphere, understand its advanced infrastructure management functionality and be able to collect data from its underlying physical components (servers, storage, network) as well as other management tools within the enterprise. It will then analyze the millions of data points these systems produce in real-time to get to the information that matters and visually present it in a simple, actionable way through dashboards. This means infrastructure and operations teams will have the intelligence they need to make fast, informed operational decisions in order to:

Proactively ensure service levels in dynamic cloud environments
Real-time performance dashboards with patented analytics and powerful visualization of the health of the environment will allow IT to proactively pinpoint performance issues and risks before they become problems and impact SLAs.
Get to the root cause of performance problems faster
The combination of patented analytics and infrastructure-awareness will allow vCenter Operations to more accurately and rapidly determine symptoms so that infrastructure and operations teams quickly get to the root cause of performance problems. By enabling a more collaborative approach, vCenter Operations can speed problem resolution and change management cycles and reduce manual efforts by 40 percent.
Optimize deployments in “real-time” to enable self-service provisioning
vCenter Operations will provide real-time analysis of performance and capacity to help teams make fast, informed decisions on deployment. This capability will be critical to enabling rapid and reliable provisioning needed in self-service environments.
Maintain compliance in the face of constant change
Automated provisioning and configuration analysis will ensure optimal configuration by automatically detecting configuration changes and enabling rollback to help IT maintain continuous compliance with operational best practices and industry or regulatory compliance requirements.

“To us, cloud computing means dynamic resources that are self-provisioning, and VMware vCenter™ Operations is purpose-built to support this type of environment,” said Brian Alexander, systems architect, information technology, Mentor Graphics Corporation. “Two things set VMware vCenter™ Operations apart: the hooks into VMware vSphere^® that give it broad understanding of the system – storage, network, VM performance – and the analytics that will transform the data it gleans into actionable information.”

vCenter Operations Pricing and Availability

vCenter Operations is designed as a set of products and solutions that will bring together the performance, capacity and configuration management capabilities VMware has developed and acquired, including VMware vCenter CapacityIQ™, VMware vCenter Configuration Manager and Integrien Alive™. vCenter Operations will be available in three editions to meet the needs of customers managing both VMware vSphere-virtualized and physical environments.

vCenter Operations Standard offers performance management with capacity and change awareness for VMware vSphere-virtualized and cloud environments.
vCenter Operations Advanced adds more advanced capacity analytics and planning to vCenter Operations Standard’s performance management for VMware vSphere-virtualized and cloud environments.
vCenter Operations Enterprise offers performance, capacity and configuration management capabilities for both virtual and physical environments and includes customizable dashboards, smart alerting and application awareness.

The first versions of these editions will be available in late Q1 with prices starting at $50 per VM. vCenter Operations will be available through VMware sales and via VMware’s more than 25,000 channel partners.

Additional Resources

About VMware

VMware delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform – VMware vSphere^® – customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2010 revenues of $2.9 billion, more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization, which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com

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VMware, VMware vSphere, VMware vCenter and VMware vCenter CapacityIQ are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, possible transformations of IT business models, the expected availability and features of its vCenter Operations solutions and their benefits to customers. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (iv) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products and computing strategies, (v) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vi) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software and platforms for cloud and desktop computing; (vii) changes to product development timelines; (viii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (ix) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (x) the successful integration of acquired companies and assets into VMware. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that we may file from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.