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VMware Virtualization Offers Highest Consolidation Ratios in the Industry – Runs Up to 2X Number of Apps at Equal or Greater Performance For Lower Cost Per App

VMware Virtualization Offers Highest Consolidation Ratios in the Industry – Runs Up to 2X Number of Apps at Equal or Greater Performance For Lower Cost Per App

VMware Introduces Cost-Per-Application Calculator Enabling Customers to Quantify Cost Savings and Compare Virtualization Solutions

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 23, 2009 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced VMware Infrastructure 3 offers the highest server consolidation ratios in the industry, resulting in a lower cost solution—according to industry analyst firm, Taneja Group.

“Taneja Group is closely studying how VMware infrastructure scales in comparison to other offerings in the market", says Jeff Boles, senior analyst and director of technology validation services at Taneja Group. “VMware’s technological superiority is very clear. We’ve validated in a number of tests that VMware virtualized servers can run twice as many applications than other hypervisors at equal or even greater performance levels. In our view, customers should be assessing virtualization on a “cost per application” basis.   VM density has a significant impact on cost per application because it is tied to server equipment, software licensing, and management infrastructure complexity.  When looking at all of these factors that contribute to total upfront solution cost, VMware’s advanced technology actually makes it less expensive”

To help enterprises fully evaluate the overall value of their server virtualization technology, VMware also unveiled today the VMware Cost-Per-Application Calculator. The online calculator enables an organization to estimate cost savings from VMware solutions and compare their savings to other offerings. As the calculator details the costs to virtualize a set number of applications, a user is able to clearly see the savings enabled by virtualizing more applications per physical server.

“Now more than ever, it is crucial for customers to get the most value out of their virtualization solutions,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president, server business unit, VMware. “Our unique features allow customers to achieve significantly higher consolidation ratios than any other offering in the industry. As such, VMware solutions generate more value for our customers than what other vendors might market as “free” offerings. Today, we are releasing a tool that enables customers to fully evaluate their options.”

Following the lead of analysts and customers, VMware has adopted “cost per application” as a more accurate metric to compare costs between virtualization solutions. Going beyond a simplistic license price comparison, evaluating cost per application takes into consideration the number of virtual machines that can be run on a single server, or the ”virtual machine density” enabled by a specific virtualization solution. The higher the virtual machine density enabled, the higher the server consolidation ratio. The higher the consolidation ratio, the more an organization can reduce its infrastructure costs (including costs for servers, networking. storage, power and datacenter space), and software costs, (including guest operating system and virtualization software licenses). Following this logic, the solution that can provide the higher consolidation of servers – without an impact to performance – also provides the most value to customers.

“Determining the cost of deploying server virtualization cannot be accomplished by simply looking at the upfront price of virtualization software licenses,” said Kris Jmaeff, Information Security Systems Specialist for Interior Health. “We found that doing so would provide a misleading picture of actual costs. The number of applications that a virtualization platform can run per server directly determines how much you will ultimately spend on servers, storage, networking, electricity, cooling, and datacenter space. Moreover, the cost of management software and management servers needs to be included as well. Cost-per-application accounts for all these factors. VMware’s superior virtualization technology enabled us to deploy virtualization at a very low cost. We were able achieve higher consolidation ratios than with commodity virtualization products, thereby saving a lot on hardware and software costs and maximizing our return on investment. At the same time - we greatly improved the reliability, flexibility and availability of our IT infrastructure.”

VMware Infrastructure 3 is the industry’s most robust, reliable, richly featured and widely adopted x86 virtualization platform. The unique features and architectural design of VMware Infrastructure 3 allow customers to run more applications per server than commodity virtualization offerings. Case studies of VMware’s customer deployments demonstrate that VMware Infrastructure 3 users typically achieve 50-70 percent higher consolidation ratio per server than is possible with commodity hypervisors, resulting in a 20-30 percent lower cost per-application than could be obtained with other vendors’ offerings.

To view the Taneja Group report entitled, “The True Cost of Virtual Server Solutions,” visit: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/technology/True_Cost_Virtual_Server_Solutions.pdf  
The VMware Cost-Per-Application Calculator is available at http://www.vmware.com/go/costperappcalc

About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.

VMware and VMware Infrastructure are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.