VMware steps up IT automation game

VMware is demonstrating four virtual machine management offerings designed to automate the data center.

On Monday, VMware announced four products to better manage and automate the IT department to coincide with its VMworld Europe conference. Among the offerings:

• VMware Lifecycle Manager is designed to automate deploying, managing and updating virtual machines.
• VMware Lab Manager streamlines the QA process and easier policy control management. It is available today.
• VMware Stage Manager rolls out technology services into production and tests them.
• VMware Site Recovery Manager centralizes data recovery plans and automates and tests the processes.

Individually, these products--all available by the second quarter--are just the latest move for VMware to move up market away from the virtualization commodity scrum that's brewing. The big picture is that IT is being increasingly automated in the background. In fact, VMware is increasingly sounding a lot like Opsware, now a unit of HP. The general theme is the same: Automate the data center and put it on autopilot.

More virtualization reading:

• Storage virtualization: Why aren't the big guys talking more about it?
• VMware: Sales light; shares much lighter afterhours