Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of server virtualization software, and Avnet Technology Solutions, a value-added distributor of enterprise computing products, today announced the expansion of their distribution partnership to Australia. Avnet has been promoting and selling Virtual Iron in Europe since June 2007 and recently expanded that relationship in February of 2008.

The virtualization market is booming in Australia according to IDC, but until now, users’ choices were limited to proprietary, high-priced solutions or products with very limited functionality and poor performance. By leveraging open source, industry standards and the latest processor technologies from Intel and AMD in its products, Virtual Iron offers a comparable alternative to the market leader without the cost and complexity.

”We are very excited about working with Virtual Iron to enable the Australian channel to greatly expand their market opportunity in the server virtualization market,” said Gavin Lawless, general manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, Australia. “Working with Virtual Iron gives us a foundation vendor for our server virtualization and storage practice. While we have just signed with Virtual Iron for virtualization, we have also announced a new relationship with Data Domain for storage. In essence, we are building a solution practice that will enable business partners to leverage the rapid growth in these markets.”

A recent IDC Australia report titled Consolidation, Virtualisation, and Storage Strategies in Australia Small and Medium-Sized Business: The Quiet Revolution notes that "Cost considerations continue to be the strongest driver to the adoption of consolidation and virtualisation in Australian SMBs. This is due to operation costs decreasing as the ratio of personnel to number of servers/amount of storage increases,. . . Although 60% of SMBs could accommodate more servers and storage in their server room, they are not inclined to do so because of the challenges implied. As a result, around half of SMBs are investing in consolidation, virtualisation and better management tools to deal with the situation.”

Virtual Iron addresses this gap by providing customer–proven server virtualization capabilities that are easy to use and afford. The platform combines an open source hypervisor with robust virtualization services, policy-based management and transparent workload migration capabilities. The software also takes full advantage of new hardware–assisted virtualization on servers to deliver near native performance. Unlike other virtualization solutions, Virtual Iron requires no installation or management of software on physical servers, further simplifying deployment and data center operations. Users leverage Virtual Iron to support a broad range of data center initiatives including server consolidation, development and test optimization, high availability, disaster recovery, capacity management and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Virtual Iron has adopted a 100 percent channel distribution strategy that maximizes product and services opportunities for its partners. This affords value-added resellers the opportunity to deliver complete solutions to their customers that include servers, SAN, storage, software and professional services. Some of the typical reseller partner services and consulting engagements driven by Virtual Iron include data center assessments, physical to virtual migration, business continuity and disaster recovery planning, capacity planning and utilization, implementation and deployment, policy-based automation development and various managed services.

“The server virtualization market is an exciting opportunity. Organizations are rapidly adopting the technology as they strive to consolidate their physical server footprint, maximize resource utilization and deploy high availability and disaster recovery solutions,” said Craig Stockdale, managing director for Virtual Iron in the Asia-Pacific region. “There is tremendous demand worldwide for an alternative to VMware, and our combination of comprehensive capabilities, ease of use and affordability is meeting a real need. Avnet will be instrumental in establishing our presence here, and we look forward to working with them to build out our channel network to further capitalize on this huge opportunity in the Australian market.”