VMware Enables Project Management Institute to Deploy Virtualized Application Platform for Production and Development Environments
Organization Credits VMware Infrastructure with Helping Deliver Seven-Figure Cost Savings, Migrates Entire Datacenter in Real Time with VMware VMotionTM
PALO ALTO, Calif. – November 11, 2008 -- VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that the Project Management Institute (PMI), the leading advocate for the project management professional globally, has deployed VMware’s industry-leading management and virtualization platform, VMware Infrastructure, to help control rising IT costs and improve the overall manageability of PMI’s business-critical application environment.
Founded in 1969, PMI has more than 400,000 members and credential holders in 174 countries. PMI turned to VMware in 2006 when business requirements were forcing PMI to buy and provision four to eight new servers every month. The datacenter was nearing maximum capacity and it was becoming increasingly difficult for PMI to find the time or resources to test and rollout new applications. In its initial deployment of VMware Infrastructure, PMI consolidated nine server racks into three. Subsequently they created 17 concurrent test environments in the datacenter, utilizing a total of 550 virtual machines (VMs) for both production and test, with an average consolidation of 12 VMs running on each physical host for production and 30 VMs running on each host for test and development.
“We’re able to do things today that we couldn’t have even considered without VMware,” said Rob Riisen, manager of technology infrastructure at PMI. “For example, we just moved our datacenter, including 45 terabytes of data, to a new location in suburban Philadelphia. We connected our old location to the new location via dark fibre. We utilized VMotion to move the entire datacenter to the new location in real time. No downtime, no service interruption, and we didn’t have to lift a finger to transport the old hardware to the new facility. Without the VMware platform, that scenario wouldn’t have even been on the drawing board.”
Upon initial deployment Riisen and his team estimate the immediate operational cost savings from virtualization will be $210,000 over 3 years, which includes $60,000 from reduced power consumption, and another $150,000 due to fewer hardware support contracts. On the capital expenditure side, Riisen and team estimate that building 550 VMs rather than buying 550 physical machines has helped PMI avoid spending in excess of a million dollars.
PMI has virtualized over 90 percent its infrastructure to date, and has a strict virtualization-first policy. The VMware platform is PMI’s standard virtualization environment. Applications running on the VMware platform include employee-facing and member-facing systems, such as PMI’s web marketplace and knowledge base, and Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint.
“We haven’t found a Windows application we couldn’t virtualize with VMware,” said Riisen. “It’s a great application environment for both production and testing. For production, it gives us tremendous performance and availability. For test and development, it gives us unbeatable flexibility. Over the past four months, we’ve probably built 600 temporary VMs for test and dev. We can continuously create, refresh or eliminate VMs. That’s impossible in a hardware-based environment. In some instances, we’ve been able accelerate project timelines from 10 days down to a few hours.”
When asked why PMI selected VMware’s platform, Riisen explained that VMware provides a complete solution to help ensure high availability, disaster recovery, manageability and scalability. “VMware gives us the premier virtualization platform along with a robust toolset. It helps us comply with strict application SLAs, and it gives us great confidence in our IT infrastructure.”
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 2007 revenues of $1.3 billion, more than 120,000 customers and more than 20,000 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.
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