VMware, Genilogix Team Up on Application Testing Solution

VMware introduced Lab Manager last December as an add-on to its Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) platform. Lab Manager 2.5, released Monday, features several additions to the technology VMWare gained with the acquisition of Akimbi Systems last June. The latest version features an ROI calculator for resellers to project savings for potential customers, the Genilogix integration with HP Quality Center as well as a similar integration by Borland with its own Silk Central Test Manager software, more storage support, expanded OS support to include 64-bit and SMP systems as well as Solaris 10 and Microsoft Vista, and added server maintenance and clean-up features.

While cost savings remain the core value proposition of VMware's virtualization solutions, the flexibility gained by going virtual is a "more interesting" selling point, according to James Phillips, VMware's senior director of virtual software life-cycle automation solutions.

"If you virtualized your data center using VMware, you're going to lower the cost of infrastructure, operating costs, cooling and power, etc. But the second promise is more interesting. If you virtualize your data center, that level of flexibility can create solutions to problems in IT management that were previously unimagined," Phillips said.

"Lab Manager builds on top of VI3 in a way that leverages the ability to chip away at problems associated with application development."

The new Genilogix product is called VMware Lab Manager Add-in for HP Quality Center. The Blue Bell, Penn.-based VAR will bundle any purchase of Lab Manager or Quality Center with the other, said HB Farris, practice manager of function testing services at Genilogix.

"Our client base is primarily companies that have testing organizations, any company that needs to test vendor software or their own in-house developed applications. The beta version [of Lab Manager 2.5] was very impressive and the feature set was wonderful, where you can quickly provision applications. One of the key benefits between the VMware tool and Quality Center that our add-in addresses is coordination between the testing environment and the actual testing processes," Farris said.

"This add-in gives you the ability to deploy a virtual testing environment and the ability to run unattended automated tasks in off-hours."

The starting price for Lab Manager 2.5 is $15,000, in addition to the necessary VI3 licenses which cost $1,000 per dual core server.

VMware is offering a $35,000 bundle that comes with Lab Manager, five two-way VI3 licenses and five two-way Lab Manager agent licenses and 10 copies of VMware Workstation.