VMware launches vCenter Operation, eyes bigger piece of data center pie

VMware is moving upstream in the software stack into IT operations management.

On Tuesday, VMware rolled out VMware vCenter Operations, which will aim to integrate computing assets, capacity and configurations. Analytics will help automate virtualized data center infrastructure.

The backdrop is that VMware is increasingly moving up the data center stack. As the hypervisor market becomes commoditized, VMware is aiming higher. First, VMware rolled out the vSphere cloud operating system. And now the company is looking to IT management software.

VCenter Operations will be tightly integrated with vSphere, but can manage other infrastructure, said Rob Smoot, director of product marketing management at VMware. "We're expanding from infrastructure management to operations management," said Smoot.

The rub: VMware's operations play could compete with everything from BMC to IBM's Tivoli to HP's OpenView to Microsoft's Systemcenter to other packages. "The reality today is that we're in a state of coopetition," said Smoot, who added that there will be a lot of integration with third party systems. "We're not building out a broad portfolio. You can use data from Systemcenter and other aspects. It's not meant to be a broad framework as much as automation and intelligence."

Bottom line is that VMware wants a bigger role in managing your data center.

The key points:

• VCenter Operations is primarily hooked into vSphere. The aim is to collected data from physical components and management software in the enterprise. VCenter Operations then puts that data in a dashboard.
• The application is designed to diagnose problems and ensure server levels.
• VCenter operations is expected to speed up change management and manual efforts.
• Smoot said the aspiration of vCenter Operations is to take as much of the human element out of management.

According to VMware, vCenter Operations comes in the following flavors:

• A standard edition offers performance management with capacity and change tracking for VMware vSphere environments.
• An advanced version adds capacity analytics and planning. This flavor is also focused on vSphere shops.
• The enterprise addition of vCenter Operations will offer performance, capacity and configuration management for both virtual and physical environments.

These versions will be available late in the first quarter with prices starting at $50 per virtual machine.