VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today introduced VMware Lab Manager, which enables enterprise software development organizations to more efficiently utilize software development and test lab assets, accelerate software development cycles and increase the quality of delivered software products.
"VMware is committed to bringing products to market that harness the power and flexibility of VMware Infrastructure to transform and enhance our customers' most critical IT processes," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. "VMware Lab Manager leverages VMware Infrastructure to simplify and streamline the software lifecycle, automating the setup, capture, storage and sharing of multi-machine software configurations and making them available on demand to development and test teams through a self-service portal."
VMware Lab Manager is optimized for use in the development, test and integration stages of an organization's software lifecycle process, complementing VMware VirtualCenter, which supports the production-oriented stages of the process: staging, deployment and management of production software systems. These products together leverage the power and flexibility of VMware Infrastructure to provide the only complete, closed-loop software lifecycle automation framework that enables efficient, bi-directional management and movement of complex multi-machine software configurations through all stages of the software lifecycle. Users of the product can be local or remote to the VMware Lab Manager installation, enabling customers with remote development and test teams to share lab assets and machine images.
"Traditionally, one of the nagging points of application lifecycle solutions has been their inability to provide an effective 'handshake' between the development and production sides of the house, resulting in broken communication and hobbled processes," said Theresa Lanowitz, founder and CEO of analyst firm voke. "Offerings that are capable of providing a closed-loop framework for unifying IT tasks and teams across the software lifecycle supply a truly unique and innovative way of delivering more value to the organization."
VMware Lab Manager extends the power of VMware Infrastructure with these benefits:
* Reduced development and test lab capital and lower operating costs. VMware Lab Manager uses a shared pool of server, networking and other software lab resources and allocates them to teams on an as-needed basis. This improves on commonly employed fixed and static resource allocation strategies that do not map to the ebb and flow of development activity across teams and projects and result in suboptimal asset utilization.
* Faster software development cycles. VMware Lab Manager eliminates manual system setup and provisioning tasks. This increases the productivity of IT operations and development teams, which no longer are saddled with tedious and time-consuming tasks and instead can focus resources on higher-value activities.
* Improved software quality. Even when relying on well-written bug reports, software defects often are difficult to reproduce and fix because of differences in the environment and state of systems across test and development organizations. VMware Lab Manager solves this with"closed-loop" defect reporting, troubleshooting and resolution. VMware Lab Manager takes snapshots of complex multi-machine configurations, captures them to a shared library and assigns them a LiveLink URL that QA engineers can flag and enter into a bug report. A developer then can click on the LiveLink URL to gain instant access to the multi-machine environment in the precise state captured by QA and fix the bug. This seamless sharing of the actual defect environment reduces the time required to reproduce, troubleshoot and correct the reported bug.
* Flexible and secure outsourcing. VMware Lab Manager provides secure remote access to a software lab that can host remote developer desktops and provide remote access to shared complex lab configurations. This eliminates the time-consuming and costly replication of equipment in offshore or outsourcing partner labs, and it provides flexibility to rapidly add, remove or replace outsourced resources as business requirements change. In addition, intellectual property remains secure because it stays within the VMware Lab Manager environment rather than being replicated to offsite facilities.
"In our initial deployment of VMware Lab Manager we have seen the ability to dramatically improve utilization of servers in our development and test lab and speed up our development cycles," said James Rosikiewicz, manager of network services, information technology at Princeton Softech, a provider of enterprise data management solutions. "For instance, we'll no longer need to manually copy disk files and cobble together the multi-machine software environments needed by our development and test team. Instead, these users can now instantly make and use copies of pre-installed and setup environments, which translate to huge time savings and the ability for everyone to focus on higher value activities."