These virtual times, they are a-changin'. The writing has been on the wall for VMware Lab Manager for quite some time, and now the official word has come down from VMware that it will discontinue development on this dev/test, sandbox lab management software and transition users from Lab Manager to vCloud Director.

We know that technology in the world of IT doesn't sit still for long, so why would virtualization be any different? Why would VMware rest on its laurels with its lab management product? The story coming out of VMware for the past couple of years has been all about the cloud. Virtualization is no longer a story about the single data center environment. Things have moved onward and upward, and our data centers are moving into someone else's facility and onto someone else's equipment. VMware clouds -- ready or not, here they come.

In a recent email to Lab Manager customers, VMware wrote:

We want to provide you with an important update about the vCenter Lab Manager product. As customers continue to expand the use of virtualization both inside the datacenter and outside the firewall, we are focusing on delivering infrastructure solutions that can support these expanded scalability and security requirements. As a result of this focus, we have decided to discontinue additional major releases of vCenter Lab Manager. Lab Manager 4 will continue to be supported in line with our General Support Policy through May 1st, 2013.

...

Read the rest of this InfoWorld Virtualization Report article.