VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced that SearchWinComputing.com has named VMware Infrastructure 3 the 2006 Disaster Recovery Product of the Year. VMware Infrastructure 3, the third generation of the industry-leading infrastructure virtualization software suite, provides hardware-independent recovery, reduces hardware and infrastructure requirements and simplifies the steps in disaster recovery, enabling faster, more reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery.
The 2006 Products of the Year awards were judged by the SearchWinComputing.com editorial staff, in conjunction with a team of users, industry experts, analysts and consultants. Judges gave VMware Infrastructure 3 high marks in the following categories: innovation, performance, ease of integration, ease of use, functionality and value.

"Nobody does virtual better than VMware," said one judge. "This new product continues its dominance in this arena by allowing live failover and centralized management."

VMware Infrastructure provides a level of disaster preparedness not possible with physical infrastructure -- it enables customers who previously had no disaster recovery plan or whose disaster recovery plans were incomplete or insufficient to implement a viable disaster recovery plan for all of their critical industry-standard servers. 

"Disaster recovery has quickly emerged as a driver for adopting virtualization and is the new killer app for virtualization," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of product and solutions marketing at VMware. "We're honored that VMware Infrastructure 3 has been named the Disaster Recovery Product of the Year by SearchWinComputing.com. This award validates the choice made by thousands of customers to use VMware Infrastructure for their business continuity and disaster recovery strategy today. VMware Infrastructure gives CIOs peace of mind at night -- which is priceless."

VMware Infrastructure helps customers implement a complete business continuity plan to ensure that their IT infrastructure keeps their business running by enabling better disaster recovery, data protection and higher availability. The software suite lets users to implement a unified platform to manage all aspects of production system availability, minimize planned and unplanned downtime, protect data and systems and ensure rapid recovery from failures.

Information on SearchWinComputing.com Product of the Year awards can be found at

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/productsOfTheYear/0,294801,sid68_ayr2006,00.html.