Wednesday, June 15, 2011

While the virtualization wave continues, progress in some companies is stalling due to different factors. According to Embotics, automating the deployment and management of VMs is a key to getting companies through these stall points. Many companies that previously needed basic structure and process around how they deployed and managed VMs now need help automating this process. One of these use cases is in a private cloud environment, where companies need to deliver “IT as a Service” for their internal users. v-Commander 4.0 is focused on providing this automation and helping companies get past issues of limited staff and expertise.

What’s new

v-Commander 4.0 has new features that support the automation of VM management, like self service (wizard driven) provisioning, automatic inheritance of compliance rules and policies and intelligent placement of VMs in the infrastructure. Also included are automated service request and change request management with configurable approval and notification workflows, and automated tracking and reporting of service activities. This new version also offers integration with existing ITSM solutions and vCenter.

Storage Swiss Take

The general assumption Embotics is fighting is that automation equals complexity,  making it feasible only for the largest companies. Big implementation projects typically mean big dollars and the solutions generally available would probably support that thinking. But unlike big ticket enterprise infrastructure management solutions, Embotics’ automation support wasn’t developed as a separate set of features and functions. It’s essentially built into the v-Commander technology, as part of the basic structure of their VM lifecycle management solution. This enables Embotics to offer this technology at cost points that fit the mid-market company.

Eric Slack, Senior Analyst