Hyper9, Inc. and Infinite Group, Inc. (OTCBB: IMCI) today announced a strategic partnership in which Infinite Group, Inc. (IGI) will provide virtualization management services to the federal, state and local IT services sector using Hyper9’s Virtualization Optimization Suite™ (VOS) solution.

Falling tax revenues, which are straining federal and state IT budgets, and the push for energy-saving technology among public-sector accounts are driving the uptick in demand for virtualization in government. However, a recent report by CDW Government Inc. indicates that although nearly three-quarters of federal information technology managers recognize the benefits of virtualization, just 20 percent say their agencies are harnessing the technology to its fullest.

The Hyper9-IGI collaboration combines best practices and leading-edge technology to give IT managers and administrators better business insights into their virtual infrastructure, and help government and commercial clients get more out of their virtualization investments.

Hyper9’s VOS solution inspects, correlates and monitors configuration, performance, event and historical data across the virtual infrastructure, combining usability and dashboard features with in-depth analytics and reporting to help users find and reclaim virtual resources. Out of the box features include one-click access to data and common tasks, such as “find VMs,” “run reports,” and “solve VM sprawl,” giving enterprises better visibility and context to make proactive business decisions.

“The ease with which VMs can be deployed has led to a growing phenomenon of VM sprawl, increasing the time and expense of managing virtual environments, and undermining the ROI potential of virtualization projects,” said Jason Langone, vice president of Virtualization Services for Infinite Group. “Partnering with Hyper9 will give us key insight into our customers’ virtual environments, eliminating manual assessments and reporting, and helping them establish best practices around proactive monitoring and reporting which can be maintained over time.”

Virtualization and consolidation services represent a key practice area for Infinite Group in the commercial and government markets. IGI provides a complete range of virtualization services, including capacity planning and assessment, server consolidation, desktop virtualization, application virtualization, Physical to Virtual migrations (P2V), as well as disaster preparedness and recovery services.

“Virtualization technology enables organizations to shrink the size of their IT footprint – the benefits of which include reduced capital and operating costs, improved continuity of operations and network security, and better utilization of computing resources,” said Bill Kennedy, CEO of Hyper9. “We’re excited to partner with IGI to bring innovative virtualization technology and best practices to an expanded category of government and commercial clients.”