Technology Service News - VMware and IBM Drive More into Blade Servers

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VMware and IBM Drive More Value into Blade Servers

IBM to Bundle Evaluation Copies of Industry-Leading VMware Virtual Infrastructure in IBM eServer BladeCenter

PALO ALTO, Calif. and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 23, 2005 — At the Server Blade Summit 2005, VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, announced an agreement with IBM to bundle evaluation copies of VMware virtual infrastructure into IBM eServer BladeCenter shipments worldwide. Under terms of the agreement, customers purchasing IBM BladeCenter will receive six-month evaluation copies of VMware ESX Server, VMware Virtual SMP and VMware VirtualCenter with VMotion.

"VMware virtual infrastructure on IBM eServer BladeCenter allows customers to experience the benefits of virtualization in a scale out environment. Not only can they increase the utilization of their individual server resources, but they can increase the utilization and flexibility of their complete infrastructure," said Jeff Benck, vice president and business line executive of IBM eServer BladeCenter. "This enhances application availability, speeds deployment and reduces overall operating costs - key needs for delivering an enterprise class x86 infrastructure platform."

IBM eServer BladeCenter running VMware virtual infrastructure provides enterprises with scalable, virtualized server platforms on which to deploy their mission-critical applications and services, helping customers experience a dramatic reduction in the cost of ownership by reducing the size and complexity of their IT infrastructure.

"VMware virtual infrastructure increases the efficiency of the IBM BladeCenter," said Carlo Bonura, technical system analyst for Dean Health System, a Wisconsin-based provider of integrated medical services, insurance and research. "It makes our server environment more manageable and redundant, and it also boosts efficiency because blades take up half the space of traditional 1U servers. And virtual machines share resources such as switches and interface cards, making management simpler and more centralized."

VMware ESX Server is VMware's data center-class virtual infrastructure software for partitioning, consolidating and managing computing resources. Virtual SMP support allows virtual machines to span multiple physical processors, making virtual machines ideal for resource-intensive enterprise applications. VMware VirtualCenter provides customers a central point of control for virtual computing resources, and VMotion technology enables live virtual machines to be migrated for dynamic load balancing and zero-downtime maintenance.

"IBM and VMware share the same vision of increasing efficiency and reducing complexity for our customers," said Diane Greene, president of VMware. "Coupling blades with VMware virtual infrastructure goes a long way towards helping enterprise customers better contain, monitor and manage server workloads. This combination further strengthens the joint IBM/VMware offerings."

This announcement expands an existing VMware and IBM relationship, as well as the commitment by the two companies to work together on providing solutions that help simplify management and utilization of IT resources. IBM has been offering VMware virtual infrastructure on IBM eServer systems for nearly three years.

VMware provides the partitioning technology for IBM's industry-leading Virtualization Engine technology, and VMware and IBM are jointly developing integrated management solutions with IBM Director, IBM's leading client/server workgroup manager.