Today at VMworld 2008, VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, announced the expansion of the VMware Ready Program for partners providing management solutions for the Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS) from VMware. The VDC-OS transforms enterprise datacenters into an “internal cloud” – an elastic, shared, self-managing and self-healing utility that also federates with external clouds of computing capacity to free IT from the constraints of static hardware and location. The VMware Ready Program gives management solution partners full access to a rich set of management functionality and integration interfaces for the VMware vCenter management product portfolio – as well as technical qualification, integration best practices and logo usage that offer customers an easy way to identify products that tightly integrate with or extend native VMware vCenter management capabilities.

Key management vendors including BMC Software, CA, EMC, HP Software, IBM Tivoli, NetIQ, nworks (a veeam company), Quest Software, Symantec, and Tripwire are using vCenter technologies today and are delivering or qualifying VMware Ready management solutions.

Partner Solutions Integrate With and Extend VMware vCenter

Today, VMware vCenter products provides management functionality for a wide range of virtualization management operations for the VDC-OS, including virtual machine discovery and configuration management, monitoring, performance management, provisioning, and resource management. vCenter products combined with standardized, hardware-independent virtual machine containers that can be easily changed, moved and manipulated, have helped some VMware customers automate more IT processes and increase datacenter management productivity by 2-3 times compared to physical environments.

Additional APIs and integration technologies (e.g., UI plug-in architectures) facilitate the integration of VMware management functions into many types of VMware Ready third-party solutions. These open interfaces offer solution providers the ability to integrate management of the VDC-OS with end-to-end management processes spanning heterogeneous datacenter environments (such as x86, mainframe, Sparc, and Power; and across different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris; and across different application stacks, such as Java, .Net, LAMP, web 2.0). For example, a common integration would be an enterprise-wide IT service requisition solution that delivers policy-based provisioning of VMware virtual machines alongside physical datacenter resources.

VMware Ready Management Solution Qualification and Logos

The VMware Ready Program will include a new tiered qualification criteria for management products to help validate that partner products follow VMware guidelines and are interoperable with vCenter products. This assurance will accelerate implementation of qualified management solutions and help customers reduce IT expenses.

In addition to designating solutions that meet basic interoperability with vCenter, VMware will also designate a set of recommended solutions for essential management processes like monitoring, performance management, configuration management, change management, provisioning, compliance and chargeback that adhere to more stringent integration guidelines and pass technical validation. Partner products passing this additional qualification will be allowed to use the VMware Ready Optimized logo, where Optimized signifies that the qualifying products provide optimized levels of integration, functionality, or performance.

“VMware has helped thousands of enterprise customers create a fluid and dynamic shared infrastructure cloud that is abstracted away from the complexity of hardware as well as the varying nature of applications,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions, VMware. “VMware Ready for management solutions provide customers added value beyond the capability of any single vendor; customers get end-to-end solutions that will help manage their VDC-OS and control and manage applications in highly dynamic and heterogeneous environments.”

“Virtualization has changed the face of how infrastructure is deployed and managed in the datacenter,” said Cameron Haight, research vice president, Gartner. “To truly capitalize on the value of virtualization, manageability cannot be an after-thought. IT leaders must plan for and adopt processes and tools that work across both virtual and physical environments.”

Management technology vendors who are members of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner program with products meeting eligibility requirements may apply to qualify those products as VMware Ready. Qualified partners in the program will have advance access to vCenter technologies to develop and deliver solutions that interoperate and are optimized for VMware vCenter products. VMware Ready management solutions will be featured in the VMware Ready solution catalog on vmware.com.

For more information on the VMware Ready Program for management solutions, and VMware vCenter products, please visit www.vmware.com/go/vcenter