VMWare on Monday is expected to introduce a new product bundle that it hopes will extend its lead in the virtualisation software market.
The company is expected to announce VMWare Infrastructure 3, a software suite combining VMWare's ESX Server product with VirtualCenter management tools, VMFS distributed file system software, the company's Distributed Resource Scheduler, and its High Availability and Consolidated Backup tools.
VMWare sells software that lets a single server run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Such tools are becoming increasingly popular as companies seeks to save money. Products from VMWare, and from rivals including Microsoft and the open source Xen Project, allow companies to consolidate the work of many physical servers onto fewer machines. Newcomers are also entering the field.
VMWare hopes to move beyond server consolidation to become the default choice for companies looking to manage their entire infrastructure, as virtualised server "farms" become more common, said Diane Greene, VMWare's president.
Companies are becoming more savvy about how they use virtualisation, Greene said. "Instead of building and configuring servers, companies can now aggregate their resources and deploy their business services," she said. "People used to replicate their physical, single-server worlds on virtualised servers. Now, they see they can do new things that weren't possible before."
Greene said the new software can help companies can rapidly shift computing resources to where they are most urgently needed. That's long been the promise behind concepts like utility and on-demand computing.
Greene said Infrastructure 3 has been in testing since last October by more than 6,400 participants.
VMWare, a subsidiary of storage maker EMC, leads the virtualisation market. But Microsoft has been making a concerted effort to catch up. The company last month updated its plans for new virtualisation software and expanded its lineup through the acquisition of Softricity, a Boston-based company that specialises in application virtualisation.
Even as Intel and AMD add virtualisation hardware support to make the technology mainstream, VMware is exerting price pressure on Microsoft while the Xen project is giving rival Linux a major lead over Windows.
Microsoft's Longhorn Server operating system, due next year, will include better virtualisation tools, the company has said.
While Microsoft's approach to virtualisation is to build key features into their server operating system, Greene argues that a better approach is to separate those features into infrastructure software. Underlying operating system decisions, in the future, "will not matter", she said. "The application writer will pick the operating system best suited to the application they want to deliver."
VMWare said Infrastructure 3 will be available this month in three versions: Infrastructure Starter for small and medium-sized companies costs $1,000 (£530) per two processors; Infrastructure Standard is for companies consolidating department-level environments and costs $3,750 per two processors; and Infrastructure Enterprise, aimed at large companies, sells for $5,750 per two processors.
