Lanamark Inc., a global provider of virtualization capacity planning and IT assessment software, today announced general availability of Lanamark Suite 2009. The new version includes support for monitoring Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX, supplements server information with power consumption, form factor, age and warranty metrics, and simplifies capacity planning with significant user experience and reporting automation enhancements.

"EMA research has shown that up-front capacity planning for both physical and virtual infrastructure is vital for achieving major benefits of virtualization like cost reduction, resource efficiency and business agility," said Andi Mann, research director for leading IT analyst firm, Enterprise Management Associates. "Poor planning, by contrast, leads to higher costs, VM sprawl, and additional staff overhead. Where Lanamark is focusing - on capacity planning and management - correlates very strongly to best practice outcomes, including reducing administrator requirements by 50% or more, saving over $3300 per VM on staff costs alone, and measurable reductions in both floor space and power consumption."

"Lanamark Suite enables us to offer our customers unbiased, data-driven and highly optimized virtualization solutions across Citrix, Microsoft, Parallels and VMware platforms," said Paul Watson, managing director at SITS Group, a leading provider of desktop and server virtualization services in the UK. "The new version of Lanamark Suite allows us to deliver even more value to enterprises looking to virtualize physical desktops and servers and optimize both existing and newly-deployed virtual infrastructure."

Lanamark Suite 2009 now includes monitoring of Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX free of charge for all assessments commencing prior to March 31, 2009. Standard licensing per desktop or server workload per assessment still applies.

"With most enterprises either adopting or already using virtualized infrastructure, it is clear that support for profiling both physical and virtual machines is now a must-have," said Mark Angelo, CEO of Lanamark. "With Lanamark Suite 2009, our channel partners can deliver platform-agnostic virtualization assessments that span physical and virtual infrastructure."