VMware Partner News

New Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Product Launch

Today, VMware released an enhanced version of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution that includes the new VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2.  VMware Desktop Manager 2 allows users to securely connect to their virtual desktops in the data center and gives IT administrators an easy, secure and cost-effective way to manage desktops.

Key features of VMware VDI:

• Extends powerful VMware Infrastructure 3 capabilities such as business continuity and disaster recovery to your desktops
• Streamlines desktop management to reduce operating costs and increase control
• Delivers complete desktop environments with greater application compatibility

Take advantage of limited time VDI promotion

For a limited time VMware is providing customers with a free VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Starter Kit (an $1815 value) with qualifying VI3 purchases. 

Learn more

Sales tools and collateral to help you sell the VMware VDI solution

In the month of January, we held a series of special VMLive webinar trainings to help prepare you for the VDI announcement that will be released today.  VMware VDI opens up even more opportunities to sell VMware virtualization solutions.

• You can find the recorded VMLives as well as the presentation decks in Partner Central.  Simply click on ‘All previous shows’ on the home page under VMLive.

We have updated Partner Central with some valuable new materials to help prepare you for questions your customers and prospects may have. We have also created, for the first time, a single Sales Kit for partners which contains all the required collateral to successfully sell VDI. You can find it in Partner Central > Product & Solutions tab > Desktop Manageability.

Get enabled for FREE:  Online training for VDI

To get enabled, partners are highly encouraged to go through the new VDI VSP and VTSP self paced online training.

Partners can access the VDI sales training (VSP):

• Partner Central >Training > Choose the language > VSP Get started > VSP Specialties (Selling VMware Enterprise Desktop Solutions)

Partners can access the VDI technical training (VTSP):

• Partner Central  >Training > Choose the language > VTSP Get started  > Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Overview
• Partner Central  > Training > Choose the language > VTSP Get started  > Using VMware Virtual Desktop Manager

Partner Central is the interactive online resource center that allows Partners exclusive access to valuable sales tools and marketing resources, program information and collateral and more. Maximize your membership by visiting Partner Central.For more navigation tips on how to use Partner Central, please refer to the user guide found on Partner Central under InfoCenter >> Partner Central Resources.

New documents that have been uploaded last week include:

• VMware Stage Manager : FAQs, Product Briefs, Box Shots, Email Copy, Product Descriptions
  Access Partner Central >> Products & Solutions Tab >> Products
• VDI Promotion ( VDI Starter Kit FREE with an eligible VI3 purchase) : Flyer, FAQs, Email Template
  Access Partner Central  >> Marketing Tab
• SolutionTrack : Virtual Infrastructure Kit (This does not substitute for the All Day Partner Training Class)
  Access Partner Central  >> Home

VMLive is VMware's interactive webinar series designed specifically for our partner community. There are two versions of VMLive - Tech Edition and Sales Edition. Tech Edition is intended for the System Engineer and Technical Consultant audience; the Sales Edition is intended for sales, marketing and business audience. VMLive is available exclusively to VMware partners. Please take note of these upcoming VMLive sessions:

VMware Stage Manager is a new product release (now in beta) that will help you drive new sales opportunities within new and existing customer accounts. VMware Stage Manager is for IT teams and application owners responsible for the safe introduction of software systems into production. It manages and automates pre-production infrastructure and processes, reducing costs and risks, and accelerating an organization’s ability to rapidly and safely make changes to its critical IT systems.

Attend the VMLive Sales Edition to learn how to position VMware Stage Manager to your customers and how to leverage the beta program to build a pipeline of sales opportunities so you're ready to close deals when the product goes on sale later this year.

• Topic: VMware Stage Manager - Sales Edition
• Date : Tuesday, January 29, 2008
• Time: 8:30 am PST / 11:30 am EST

Register Now >>

View all previously recorded VMLives in Partner Central >>

As the global leader in thin computing, Wyse Technology ensures customers' desktops are secure, reliable and agile. Find out how they avoided purchasing new hardware, reduced downtime, increased CPU utilization by 80 percebt, made significant power and cooling savings and achieved a server consolidation of 10:1 with VMware Infrastructure 3.

Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif., January 21, 2008 — VMware, Inc., the virtualization software leader, today announced the public beta of VMware Stage Manager, a new first-in-class management and automation product that streamlines and accelerates the process of bringing new or modified applications and other IT services into production. Building on the management capabilities of VMware Infrastructure, VMware Stage Manager automates management of complete, multi-tier application environments – including the servers, storage and networking systems that support them – as they move through various stages from integration to testing to staging and user acceptance before being released into production.

"VMware has once again responded to the needs of customers ahead of the curve and has delivered a rock-solid beta," said Dave Welch, principal for House of Brick Technologies, a consultancy that serves blue chip companies. "They've thought of just about everything, but kept the interface simple. VMware Stage Manager enables IT to transition applications cleanly through to production. VMware Stage Manager also helps administrators move out of rote operations and keep them focused on ROI-generating projects."

As new services or changes to existing IT services are being introduced – for example,  rolling out an upgrade to Exchange 2008 or making changes to a complex SAP installation – they often follow a sequence of stages to ensure they are successfully tested, approved and configured for deployment into production. IT typically maintains numerous dedicated “shadow instances” of the production environment to enable each of these stages. These systems are prone to “drift” out of synch with the production configuration, jeopardizing the successful execution of system changes and updates and increasing the risk of production downtime.

VMware Stage Manager helps IT address these and other ”service transition” challenges with the ability to visualize, organize and streamline resources and processes across the service release lifecycle. By deploying VMware Stage Manager, IT administrators and application owners can:

• Manage pre-production infrastructure assets – servers, storage and networking equipment – utilizing them only when needed, thereby reducing server sprawl and increasing the resource utilization efficiency of IT services hosted on VMware Infrastructure
• Rapidly build up a pre-production image of complex production environments, even cloning directly from production systems to ensure that all environments are exact replicas, thereby mitigating risk of errors and potential downtime
• Systematically propagate complex system changes through all phases of the process while more easily enforcing change and release management procedures
• Accelerate the completion of requests for changes to production systems

“VMware virtualization is the standard for a new and better architecture for running applications,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware.  “VMware Stage Manager adds to the power of the VMware platform by automating and streamlining the staging process for deploying new applications and updates.”

“Enterprise IT teams face multiple resource and process challenges that introduce risk and slow down the deployment of new services into production,” said Stephen Elliot, research director for IDC. “Virtualization offers IT organizations an opportunity to streamline inefficient processes and communicate business process impact across multiple functional areas.”

For more information on VMware Stage Manager or to download the beta, please visit http://www.vmware.com/go/stage_manager_beta.

VMLive is VMware's interactive webinar series designed specifically for our partner community. There are two versions of VMLive - Tech Edition and Sales Edition. Tech Edition is intended for the System Engineer and Technical Consultant audience; the Sales Edition is intended for sales, marketing and business audience. VMLive is available exclusively to VMware partners. Please take note of these upcoming VMLive sessions:

Join us on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 for the fourth webinar in our monthly VMLive webinar series focusing on product availability and resource enhancements for VMware Professional partners and partners focused on small to mid-sized businesses. During this informative webinar, you will learn how to sell VMware server virtualization solutions with a SAN appliance from LeftHand Networks, as well as get our monthly update on what's new in the Partner Learning Center and on Partner Central.

• Topic: Successfully Selling Virtualization to Small Medium Businesses
• Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2008
• Time: 8:30 am PST / 11:30 am EST

Register Now >>

Free eLearning for Authorized Partners Extended

The 100% discount on self-paced online courses for authorized partners has been extended through February 29, 2008. Take advantage of this offer before it expires.

Self-paced online courses include:

• Fundamentals of ACE 2.0
• VMware Lab Manager 2.5
• VMware ACE 2.0 Quick Start Guide
• VMware Server 1.0 Quick Start Guide

Register now

Today VMware announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thinstall, a privately-held application virtualization software company headquartered in San Francisco. VMware is acquiring Thinstall to expand its desktop virtualization capabilities which help customers better provision, deploy and update desktop environments. The terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the current fiscal quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed.

VMware also disclosed its acquisition of services-related assets from Foedus, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based provider of virtualization technologies and services and a former North America Premier Partner. The goal of this acquisition is to accelerate the services intellectual property (IP) development release to our VIP and VAC partner community.

With the acquisition of Foedus, we intend to work with our VMware partners to further expand their virtualization services expertise to help them expand their own virtualization services businesses by equipping them with best practices and IP. VMware will develop services and sales IP to directly benefit our partner community in new solution areas around VDI, Compliance, and ROBO (Remote Office Branch Office). In 2008, VMware is committed to increasing the mix of services revenue that is delivered by our partners. We are evolving our go-to-market customer coverage model to drive more services through our partner community.

The five principals of Foedus have joined VMware and Mike Reilly, the former CEO, has joined the Americas Partner Management Team and will be focused on Partner Services Enablement and Development.

Both of these acquisitions further expand the desktop virtualization opportunity for the VMware channel. Please read the press release for the full story on these acquisitions. We will post materials to Partner Central as more information becomes available.

VMware Fusion is a winner for Macworld 23rd Annual Editor's Choice Awards.

"Between Parallels Desktop and Apple’s Boot Cam, you might think that the field of programs for running Windows on a Mac is full enough. But VMware Fusion, is a welcome addition for anyone who needs or wants to branch out to other operating systems. After all, a little competition never hurt anyone; in fact, Fusion’s features have already inspired new additions to Parallels (and vice versa). VMware Fusion also gives you access to VMware’s huge collection of appliances, ready-to-run software packages you can download and install with a double-click. The recent release of version 1.1 also brings experimental support for DirectX 9.0, enabling a number of newer games to run without resorting to Boot Camp. And if you already use Parallels, VMware 1.1 now includes a one-step Parallels importer that makes the conversion process easier."

—ROB GRIFFITHS

Remember to visit the VMware Booth #2717. Print out a map to our booth location.

Check out VMware Fusion at Macworld! Visit us at booth #2717.  Print out a map here.  We'll be raffling off copies of VMware Fusion, taking videos and photos, and doing some fun ad-hoc events at the show.

More Info >>