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VMware Announces General Availability of VMware vSphere 6, VMware Integrated OpenStack and VMware Virtual SAN 6

Newly Available Solutions Advance VMware's Unified Platform for Creating One Cloud for Any Application on Any Device

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - March 16, 2015) - VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today announced the general availability of the industry's first unified platform for the hybrid cloud featuring VMware vSphere® 6, VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware Virtual SAN™ 6, VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes™, VMware vCloud® Suite 6, and VMware vSphere with Operations Management™ 6.

VMware's unified platform enables customers to produce a consistent environment across the private and public cloud and to run, protect and manage modern or traditional applications, and spans the following solutions:

  • VMware vSphere 6delivers breakthrough new capabilities to address the unique needs of business-critical and cloud-native applications. In addition to higher performance, scale and consolidation ratios, VMware vSphere 6 also re-defines infrastructure and application service-levels and availability. Long distance vMotion, multi-processor fault tolerance, Instant Clone technology, and 3D graphics for desktop virtualization, are some of the more than 650 new features and capabilities available in VMware vSphere 6. This new release is also optimized for the latest release of VMware Horizon 6. Learn more here.
  • VMware Integrated OpenStack is a full OpenStack distribution that enables organizations to quickly and cost-effectively provide developers with open APIs to access VMware's enterprise-class infrastructure. VMware packages, tests and supports all components of the distribution, including the open source OpenStack code, and provides the distribution free of charge to VMware vSphere customers. Learn more here.
  • VMware Virtual SAN 6 introduces double the scalability and up to four-and-a-half times greater performance in comparison to the previous release while adding several new enterprise-class capabilities, making it the ideal storage platform for virtual machines, including business critical applications. The new release also introduces an all-flash architecture, enterprise-grade snapshots and rack-awareness to protect against complete rack failures. Try the evaluation.
  • VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes is a set of storage APIs that enables third-party storage arrays to dynamically provision capacity and data services for each virtual machine resulting in more agile, cost-efficient and simpler to manage storage infrastructure. Learn more here.
  • VMware vCloud Suite 6integrates VMware vSphere 6 with VMware vRealize™ Automation 6.2 and VMware vRealize Operations 6 to deliver a private cloud based on a software-defined data center architecture. The new release also introduces automated, rapid, virtual infrastructure costing and consumption reporting based on capabilities delivered within VMware vRealize Business 6 Standard. Learn more here.
  • VMware vSphere with Operations Management 6 enables customers to optimize the performance, capacity and configuration health of VMware vSphere 6. An integrated platform and management solution, it simplifies infrastructure management with predictive analytics as well as automated recommendation and remediation capabilities. Learn more here.

Ecosystem Support for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes
VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes has received strong, widespread support from the VMware storage ecosystem. To date, HP, IBM, NetApp, and Fujitsu have delivered vSphere Virtual Volumes-enabled products. Atlantis Computing, Dell, Hitachi Data Systems, NEC, NexGen, Pure Storage, Symantec, and Tintri are expected to deliver vSphere Virtual Volumes-enabled storage products in the first-half of 2015. VMware worked with design partners -- Dell, EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp -- that were instrumental in defining the direction of the technology.

New Classes and Hands-on Labs Now Available
VMware Education Services is now offering instructor-led courses on VMware vSphere 6. The three courses currently available include:

Customers, partners and prospects can also test drive the newly available solutions such as VMware vSphere 6 and VMware Virtual SAN 6 via the VMware Hands-on Labs Online. VMware Hands-on Labs is the easiest way to explore new and existing products at no charge.

Supporting Quotes
"Advancements in benefits technology and expansion into international markets are driving ACI Specialty Benefits' current hyper-growth," said Ryan Fay, chief information officer, ACI Specialty Benefits. "To meet increased customer demands, VMware vSphere with Operations has streamlined the process for onboarding new clients, and provided useful metrics for forecasting IT needs. The new Smart Alerts and enhanced capacity planning capabilities of vSphere with Operations Management 6 will allow ACI to stay agile and proactive when it comes to resolving IT issues, planning capacity, and providing an excellent customer experience for clients."

"Virtualization has completely changed how our broadcast IT interfaces with our infrastructure and allows us to scale to meet our business needs," said Tab Butler, director of media management and post production, MLB Network. "We have virtualized and automated our post-production workflows and infrastructure with VMware vSphere, helping us increase the speed and delivery of content while scaling our services to our end-user clients. We anticipate VMware vSphere 6 will further extend and enhance the performance and availability of our business-critical applications."

"Business growth has resulted in the rapid growth of manufacturing, logistics and supply chain data -- placing data storage at a premium," said Steve Taylor, IT Manager, Peter Cremer North America. "We deployed a storage and business continuity solution delivered by Appica based on VMware Virtual SAN to improve the performance and availability of our mission-critical ERP, data warehousing and business intelligence systems. We can now easily add more capacity by scaling up or scaling out our storage environment to address future needs. We expect VMware Virtual SAN 6 will enable higher levels of uptime and performance."

Additional Resources

About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2014 revenues of $6 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, vCloud, vSphere, vSphere with Operations Management and Virtual SAN are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

Contact Information:

Media Contact:
Eloy Ontiveros
VMware Global Communications
1-650-427-6145
eontiveros@vmware.com

Sam Johnston
H+K Strategies for VMware
1-212-885-0499
Sam.Johnston@hkstrategies.com