VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Inc. (Nasdaq:PEET), the premier specialty coffee and tea company in the U.S., has deployed VMware Infrastructure 3 and VMware Stage Manager to create a scalable, efficient and reliable platform for enterprise resource planning (ERP), store-level inventory management, and pre-production application testing. VMware was chosen by Peet’s to support its unique “roast-to-order” fulfillment system and integrated system requirements to meet the needs of its multi-channel customers: more than 180 company-owned stores, home delivery, direct store delivery (grocery), food service and office coffee partners.

Peet’s requires a highly efficient platform and reliable infrastructure to support its unrivaled commitment to delivering customers the freshest, roast-to-order coffee available anywhere. The Company turned to VMware’s virtualization platform in 2007 not only to meet this commitment but to also reduce power consumption and hardware costs. Since the rollout, VMware Infrastructure has proven to be highly effective for Peet’s. Application performance has improved significantly since the company deployed VMware Infrastructure, and VMware’s unique VMotion capability allows the Company to proactively minimize planned downtime and optimize application availability. To date, Peet’s has virtualized 80 percent of its IT infrastructure, reducing the number of physical hosts in its datacenter from approximately 100 to 20.

“VMware has delivered on its promise to reduce overall TCO not only by streamlining system management but also by allowing us to significantly reduce our data center footprint which reduces both direct electrical consumption and HVAC costs,” said Jeff Tatum, director, infrastructure & security, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Inc.

Another area where Peet’s is leveraging virtualization is pre-production application and system testing. VMware Stage Manager is helping the Company improve IT efficiency and time to market. Stage Manager reduces competition for hardware resources and allows multiple virtualized application environments to be run concurrently rather than sequentially in hardware-based environments.

Tatum added, “By leveraging Stage Manager and VMware templates to speed provisioning, testing and deployment of new applications, we have increased the productivity of our infrastructure group by an order of magnitude.”