PALO ALTO, Calif., July 9, 2007 – VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced the general availability of VMware Lab Manager 2.5, the latest version of the industry’s leading virtual lab automation system. VMware Lab Manager enables users of VMware Infrastructure 3 to automate the setup, capture, storage and sharing of multi-machine software configurations, enabling IT organizations to more efficiently provision and manage software development and test lab assets, producing significant IT cost savings and accelerating the delivery of higher quality software and systems.
Customers worldwide across 35 industries have adopted VMware Lab Manager since its release in December 2006. Building on the product’s early success, leading quality management suites now integrate with VMware Lab Manager and the product offers new features designed to further automate its administration and use. VMware today also unveiled a VMware Lab Manager ROI calculator to help IT teams better quantify and communicate the product’s potential value to their organizations. The ROI calculator is free of charge and available today at www.vmware.com/go/lm_calculator.
“We were reaching our limit in space, power and data drops needed to support the amount of equipment required by our software developers and test teams,” said Jay Leone, lab manager at Avaya. “With VMware Lab Manager we not only curbed server sprawl, but we were able to reduce power and data drop usage by 50 percent – and also freed up more than 1,000 square feet of physical space in decommissioned hardware. In addition, VMware Lab Manager has helped us reduce the IT staff time associated with setup and tear down of complex development and test environments by 90 percent.”
“IT organizations can leverage virtualization broadly to more efficiently deliver IT services and achieve benefits across the organization,” said Stephen Elliot, director, enterprise systems management, IDC. “Besides production data centers, IT organizations should consider virtualizing their application development and test labs to further reduce application support and management costs, and decrease application provisioning cycles. This is a strategic IT decision that drives efficiencies across the IT organization to achieve business objectives.”
Two leading automated software test automation suites now offer packaged integrations with VMware Lab Manager, further expanding the VMware partner ecosystem and taking test automation to a new level. Borland will integrate UI-level access and control of VMware Lab Manager environments with the release of Borland® SilkCentral® Test Manager™ 2007, and Genilogix is releasing the beta version of a new plug-in that integrates HP Quality Center with VMware Lab Manager. Both tools automate the provisioning process by enabling users to easily check out fully provisioned test environments stored in VMware Lab Manager directly from their test management interface. These value-added integrations provide an unmatched level of IT efficiency, dramatically streamlining test cycles and preserving the investment customers have made in their preferred toolsets.
“Applying virtualization to software test management offers an attractive value proposition for organizations by eliminating many of the time and cost constraints of multi-configuration and cross-platform software application testing,” said Brad Johnson, director of product marketing, Lifecycle Quality Management at Borland Software. “Our collaboration with VMware extends the value of our lifecycle quality management (LQM) solution and delivers to customers the significant benefits of virtual test lab management as a seamlessly integrated, core capability of our test management solution.”
“As a reseller of both VMware Lab Manager and HP Quality Center, we recognized the opportunity to deliver a solution that creates a win-win scenario for both IT and the QA organizations they serve,” said Nate Stuyvesant, chief technology officer at Genilogix, a leading software quality engineering company. “Using the Genilogix add-in for HP Quality Center, our customers can extend the power of their existing toolset while leveraging the proven capabilities of the VMware virtualization platform-it’s the best of both worlds.”
VMware Lab Manager is the most advanced virtual lab automation system on the market. It uses a shared pool of server, networking and other resources and allocates them as needed, and it provides local or remote users with a self-service portal that enables on-demand access to a shared library of complex multi-machine configurations. It is the only virtual lab automation system that offers “fenced deployment,” which enables simultaneous use of library configurations by multiple users, as well as the ability to capture complex system configurations in a live state. A unique delta-tree image library management feature enables large image libraries to be maintained without data redundancy, reducing disk storage requirements compared to other lab management systems.
VMware Lab Manager 2.5 offers the following key enhancements designed to provide customers with expanded platform support and further the product’s ease of use:
- New Library Storage Options: VMware Lab Manager 2.5 adds support for iSCSI and NFS storage for storing virtual machine libraries, in addition to its current support for fibre channel SANs. This provides flexibility for customers by enabling them to use a broader set of storage options tailored to their preferences.
- Expanded Operating System Support: Customers can create, deploy and manage virtual machine configurations using 64-bit and Virtual SMP guest operating systems. VMware Lab Manager 2.5 also includes new tools support for virtual machines running Solaris 10 x86 and experimental support for virtual machines running Windows Vista. This expanded operating system support enables customers to create an even broader set of virtualized development and test environments to meet their needs.
- Enhanced Automation Capabilities: VMware Lab Manager 2.5 enables customers to set policies that automatically undeploy and clean up unused virtual machines, freeing up computing resources and helping users complete projects more quickly. Server maintenance is simplified by enabling users to calculate how much disk space can be made available by consolidating or deleting virtual machines, and users can quickly and easily undeploy virtual machines for redeployment on new managed hardware.
“VMware Lab Manager is a proven asset to IT organizations, validated by its rapid uptake by customers and the ROI they have achieved using the product,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. “The latest release of VMware Lab Manager further demonstrates our commitment to delivering products that harness the power and flexibility of VMware Infrastructure to transform and enhance our customers’ most critical IT processes.”
Availability and Pricing
VMware Lab Manager 2.5 is available for purchase today. A la carte pricing for VMware Lab Manager starts at $15,000 and list pricing for VMware Lab Manager bundled with VMware Infrastructure 3 starts at $35,000. More information is available at www.vmware.com/go/labmanager.
About VMware, Inc.
VMware, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC), is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world’s largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.vmware.com or call 650-475-5000.