Fortisphere, a leading provider of policy-based virtualization management software, today announced the release of Fortisphere Virtual Essentials™ 2.0, the industry’s most comprehensive solution for policy-based management of heterogeneous virtual infrastructures. With extensive eco-system integration into leading systems and infrastructure management vendors, Fortisphere is delivering next generation technology that compliments existing investments in data-center management solutions. In addition to broad eco-system integration, Virtual Essentials v2.0 also features expanded capabilities, including agentless inspection of offline virtual machine configurations, extended configuration intelligence and an enhanced policy framework to provide users with unprecedented levels of visibility, control and automation across their virtual infrastructures.

"The abstraction provided by server virtualization creates new and complex management challenges that previously did not exist,” said Chris Wolf, senior analyst, Burton Group. "Tools that leverage policies to automate virtualization management tasks, audit and track virtual assets and provide effective compliance auditing are quickly evolving from luxuries to necessities in today's increasingly complex virtual environments."

“As we continue to grow our virtual infrastructure, the management of virtual machines has become mission critical,” said Thomas Tazwell, director of engineering services at Duke Health Technology Solutions, one of the world’s leading care providers. “With Fortisphere Virtual Essentials, we are able to automate the management processes in our virtual infrastructure that let us control sprawl and reduce our time to identify previously unknown issues. For Duke that equates to real cost savings. Fortisphere plays a critical role in how we manage our virtual infrastructure and we look forward to leveraging the enhanced capabilities in Virtual Essentials v2.0.”

“Even before the current virtualization boom, management solutions commonly turned into “shelfware.” However, today’s extensive virtualization deployments require management automation to help control configuration-related issues and reclaim poorly utilized resources fueled by VM sprawl,” said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Fortisphere Virtual Essentials empowers end-users with the ability to manage all VMs, regardless of status, through policy-based automation. Fortisphere’s ability to accomplish this across heterogeneous infrastructures is further evidence that the true value of virtualization will be delivered at the management layer.”

“Fortisphere is dedicated to providing customers with the industry’s most comprehensive policy-based automation capabilities that help drive down IT costs and eliminate IT cycles associated with the manual management of a virtual environment,” said Michael Harper, president and CEO, Fortisphere. “Built on our patented Inside Track™ Technology, Virtual Essentials v2.0 is a powerful solution that provides our customers with an intelligent and controlled approach to automating the management of their virtual infrastructure. By taking a more proactive approach through policy-based management, our customers are realizing near immediate returns on their investments in virtualization technology.”

New Features and Benefits

Fortisphere Virtual Essentials v2.0 provides organizations with a number of new features designed to simplify and automate the management and growth of a virtual infrastructure. New features include:

• Enhanced User Interface—With simplified controls and elaborate graphical elements, users can more quickly view and manage the entire virtual infrastructure.
• Expanded Agentless Inspection of VMs—Inspect online and offline VMs, providing deep configuration intelligence across the entire virtual infrastructure.
• Expanded Data Collection—Discovery and assessment features provide the industries deepest details about virtual machine resources, including system, security, software and user information.
• Enhanced Comparative Analysis—Automated configuration analysis quickly identifies configuration drift and triggers the remediation process.
• Enhanced Policy Framework—The ability to author rules and import or export policies across environments and VMs provides enhanced control over the entire virtual infrastructure.
• Additional Content—Virtual Essentials v2.0 features more than 40 new out-of-the-box policy rules and reports for offline VMs, change management, configuration management, sprawl management and infrastructure activity.

Pricing and Availability

Fortisphere Virtual Essentials v2.0 will be available in September and pricing starts at $10,000.