"Virtualization is enabling companies of all sizes to reduce the cost and complexity of IT," said Ben Matheson, director of SMB at VMware.  "For SMBs, this means optimizing existing IT investments while providing enterprise-class benefits of virtualization such as disaster recovery, high availability, simplified IT management and reduced energy costs. Deploying virtualization translates into better service levels, and it enables customers to spend less on IT and reinvest these savings in their businesses. The new VMware Infrastructure packaging delivers the features, functionality and training that will help enable SMBs to more rapidly experience the value of virtual infrastructure."

According to industry analyst firm The Yankee Group, virtualization deployments among SMBs -- companies with less than 100 servers or fewer than 1,000 employees -- is expected to double during the next two years.

"Virtualization has become a mainstream technology force, influencing IT architecture decisions for companies of all sizes," said Gary Chen, senior analyst at The Yankee Group. "For SMBs, this means evaluating the A-to-Z benefits of virtualization such as server consolidation, business continuity and disaster recovery for use on current IT assets while planning for future growth. The new VMware Infrastructure 3 Acceleration Kits provide a cost-effective way for SMBs to get started with virtualization quickly while enabling the organization to scale as their business needs evolve. We see virtualization adoption as a trend in the SMB space that will continue to aggressively grow over time."

The SMB bundles are based on the latest release of VMware Infrastructure, the industry's third-generation software suite (see http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/esx_35.html). The product brings new offerings that are designed to decrease power consumption, eliminate manual tracking and patching of virtual infrastructure and increase overall infrastructure availability.

New products and features in VMware Infrastructure that are ideal for SMBs include VMware ESX Server 3i, VMware Guided Consolidation and VMware Update Manager. VMware ESX Server 3i, VMware's next-generation thin hypervisor delivered as embedded firmware in server systems from major OEM vendors or as a standalone product, will help enable customers to more easily and quickly deploy virtualization in their environments. VMware Guided Consolidation is designed to enable companies to more easily migrate from physical servers to virtual infrastructure using a step-by-step wizard that identifies physical servers for consolidation, converts them to virtual machines and intelligently places them onto the most ideal VMware ESX Server or VMware Server host. VMware Update Manager will automate patch and update management for VMware ESX Server hosts and virtual machines and is designed to relieve the significant pain point of tracking patch levels and manually applying security and bug fixes.

"Roughly 60 to 70 percent of our VMware customers are SMBs, and the new VMware Infrastructure Acceleration Kits enable us to offer more of the features they want such as centralized management, VMware HA, or VMotion, at compelling price points," said Glen Falkowski, vice president at Glencom Systems, a Professional-level member of the VMware VIP Partner Program. "For example, the VMware Infrastructure Foundation Acceleration Kit provides a solid stepping stone for SMBs considering virtualization for the first time, and enables customers to add more robust features quickly and easily. We're excited about the opportunity to enable even more flexibility for our customers who deploy VMware virtualization solutions."

Pricing, Packaging and Availability

The new VMware Infrastructure bundles are packaged into three Acceleration Kits designed to enable SMBs to more easily adopt VMware Infrastructure. Pricing is expected to take effect when the bundles are generally available later this year:

• VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit: Three 2-processor licenses of VMware Infrastructure Foundation -- which includes VMware ESX Server, VMware Consolidated Backup, VMware Update Manager, VMware Virtual SMP, VMware VirtualCenter agent and VMware VMFS -- as well as VMware VirtualCenter Foundation Server, which includes VMware Guided Consolidation and the ability to manage up to three VMware Infrastructure server hosts. List price is $2,995.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit: Two 2-processor nodes of VMware Infrastructure Standard, which includes the above features of the VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit plus VMware High Availability (HA). List price is $5,995.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Midsize Acceleration Kit: Three 2-processor nodes of VMware Infrastructure Enterprise -- which includes the above features of the VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit plus VMware VMotion, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), VMware Storage VMotion and VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM), an experimental feature -- as well as flexible training and consulting credits that can be applied to classes to learn how to deploy and use VMware Infrastructure 3, such as the "VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configuration" course. List price is $14,495.

 For more information about these SMB offerings, visit http://www.vmware.com/smb.