Virtualisation world gathers in San Francisco for VMworld

VMware has released a beta version of VMware Go

Over 10,000 delegates and 200 exhibitors are gathering in San Francisco for the launch of VMworld later today.

VMware has already announced new products, and the rest of the industry will be pushing their virtualisation products and services.

The company has released a beta version of VMware Go, an online service that speeds up the ESXi set-up process, the industry's most widely deployed hypervisor. The service is being aimed at small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) that lack the luxury of a dedicated IT department.

"Nearly every SMB stands to benefit tremendously from virtualisation," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware.

"VMware Go will simplify virtualisation for SMBs to a few easy online steps, and was designed with SMBs in mind. We want SMBs who may be sitting on the fence to realise all the benefits of virtualisation without burdening their limited IT resources."

The beta will be used to iron out any wrinkles in the service and will go live in 2010. It will be free to all users.

VMware is also launching a new suite of tools for IT managers to control virtualised networks. The tools are designed to automate certain regular tasks and provide better reporting on the functions IT managers need to handle personally.

"With the VMware vCenter family of products, customers will be able to dramatically simplify infrastructure management, service delivery and application management, eliminating tedious manual tasks, achieving greater visibility into datacentre operations, and ultimately guaranteeing service levels through set-and-forget policy-based control," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president and general manager of VMware's server business unit.

The VMware vCenter suite has seven products so far, including automation, system management and renewal, a recovery manager and an accounting tool that can report on system costs.