VMware Unveils the Virtual Infrastructure, the First Step Towards Utility Computing

PALO ALTO, Calif., November 10, 2003- VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today introduced the VMware virtual infrastructure, a new category of computing capabilities for the data center that have never before been available.

Today's IT organizations are working hard to solve the problems created by the explosion in the scope and complexity of IT platforms adopted in the 1990s. These include the migration of application architectures to thin-client, multi-tier architectures, the introduction of multiple generations of Windows servers and the growth of Linux. All of these have swept across IT organizations in successive waves over the last ten years, causing explosive growth in server counts, network complexity and storage volumes throughout geographically distributed IT organizations.

For organizations that want to evolve their infrastructure toward next generation computing models such as utility computing, the first step is the implementation of a virtual infrastructure. Virtual infrastructure provides a layer of abstraction between the computing, storage and networking hardware and the software that runs on it. By implementing a virtual infrastructure, IT organizations can provision new services and change the amount of resources dedicated to a software service simply by interacting with a management console as opposed to physically reconfiguring or repurposing hardware. The hardware management is now completely separated from the software management, and hardware equipment can be treated as a single pool of processing, storage and networking power to be allocated and reallocated on the fly across the enterprise.

By creating a uniform virtual hardware platform across the entire data center, a virtual infrastructure allows software to be installed on or moved from any physical system to another without requiring reconfiguration of the software (operating system or applications).

VMware's implementation of virtual infrastructure is based on its proven virtual machine technology. The technology and concepts were originally developed for mainframes that allowed multiple operating systems to share a single piece of hardware. For the past six years, VMware has taken that original mainframe concept and applied it to lower-priced industry-standard systems.

"VMware server products have already been adopted by thousands of IT organizations worldwide and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in hardware and operations costs when used as a server consolidation platform," said Michael Mullany, vice president of marketing at VMware. "The common vision of IT organizations today is to provide their business units with lower cost, higher service level infrastructure that enables them to respond faster to the demands of the individual business units. Now, working with our partners to enable virtual infrastructure, we're allowing customers to manage their IT infrastructure with new levels of cost-efficiency, flexibility and consistency."

Today, VMware announced availability of VMware VirtualCenter and the groundbreaking VMotion technology that broaden the capabilities of VMware server software to offer the benefits of a virtual infrastructure. VirtualCenter provides a central point of control for a virtual infrastructure while leveraging existing hardware and management frameworks and VMotion allows a virtual machine to move from any physical server to another without interruption.

VMware also announced the availability of the VMware Software Development Kit (SDK), which provides an open virtual infrastructure platform for VMware's software partners to build their own virtual solutions and integrate their management and utility computing solutions into the VMware virtual infrastructure.

About VMware, Inc.

VMware, Inc. is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world's largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.vmware.com or call 650-475-5000.

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