Today we announced that WatchGuard Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, switched from VMware Lab Manager to VMLogix LabManager in their pre-production labs. Since deploying VMLogix, WatchGuard has experienced a 91 percent savings on platform costs as well as a dramatic time savings on managing their dev/test environments. WatchGuard uses VMLogix LabManager on servers running VMware ESX 4.0. WatchGuard IT Manager Mark Olsen recently gave us this accolade, “VMLogix LabManager has completely revolutionized our developments and test process.”

To learn more about how WatchGuard is using VMLogix, you can read the case study here or read the full release here.

VMLogix has been named a finalist for the 2010 Red Herring 100 North America Award. To capture this recognition, VMLogix was evaluated with hundreds of companies from across North America based on our technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health in their respective industries.

Winners will be announced at the Red Herring North American Conference in San Diego, June 22-24, 2010. To read the full list of finalists, see http://www.herringevents.com/RHNA2010/2010finalists/2010finalists.html.

Although software development and testing was the first use case for virtual lab automation, many organizations have begun to realize that the benefits of VLA extend far beyond that. Our CEO, Sameer Dholakia, does a great job of explaining the different VLA use cases in the videos below. So if you’ve been wondering how virtual lab automation can be used in your organization and are curious about using it with Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Hyper-V, check out these short videos:

Virtual Labs on Amazon Web Services:

Virtual Labs on Hyper-V:

There has been a lot of discussion around defining a cloud and the difference between a private, on-premise cloud and a virtualized data center. In the video below CEO Sameer Dholakia helps clarify the difference and define cloud computing. If you’ve been wondering what capabilities transform your virtual data center into a private cloud and what are the benefits of those capabilities, take a look at the video.

Join Sameer Dholakia, CEO of VMLogix, and Jon Greaves, CTO of Carpathia Hosting, for a live webcast, “Bringing Development & Testing into the Cloud,” on Thursday, May 27 from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. EDT. They will discuss how VMLogix, Carpathia and Citrix Systems, Inc. have teamed up to deliver a truly turnkey solution to enterprises and federal agencies for development and testing in the cloud. Powered by VMLogix LabManager and Citrix XenServer, Carpathia InstantOn – Virtual Lab Solution provides a cloud platform that can collapse your development and testing lifecycle by up to 50 percent.

You can learn more and register here.

June 22nd marks the one year anniversary of our supporting both private and public clouds, and we are constantly excited and intrigued by how the market is embracing and using this technology.  As interest increases and more enterprises look to virtual lab automation to help them manage their cloud deployments, product reviewers are also taking a closer look. To this end, VMLogix recently participated in product reviews with InfoWorld and Virtualization Review:

InfoWorld’s Andrew Binstock reviewed the main contenders in the virtual lab management space and reviewed our on-premise solution, VMLogix LabManager.  Binstock was “favorably impressed” with LabManager – giving it an 8.3 rating which places it in the ‘very good’ category – and mentions that our roadmap includes plans to release a hybrid cloud solution in the upcoming months. You can read the full review of virtual lab managers here.

Rick Vanover, who pens the ‘Everyday Virtualization’ blog over at Virtualization Review, has been kicking the tires of our cloud solution, VMLogix LabManagerCE. Rick finds that in addition to the virtual lab management functionality, LabManagerCE is “easier than using Amazon Web Services to launch EC2 AMI instances through tools like ElasticFox or just using the Web portal directly.”

Check out Rick’s post and comment on what you think of cloud-based lab management here.

In summer ’09, VMLogix first announced our LabManager – Cloud Edition, running on top of the Amazon Web Services cloud, to bring virtual lab capabilities to public clouds.  The “bursty” nature of virtual lab workloads – dev/test, software demos/POCs/evals and software training – make them great candidates to move from on-premise infrastructure to elastic, scalable clouds.

Our enablement of VMLogix LabManager on AWS was the first implementation of our Cloud Edition, and you’ll see more coming in the future.

At Synergy last week, VMLogix announced that we are working with Carpathia Hosting and Citrix to bring development and testing workloads to the cloud by integrating VMLogix LabManager with Carpathia’s InstantOn enterprise cloud offering. The resulting InstantOn Virtual Lab solution is an easy way for organizations to get started with virtual labs in the cloud.

You can read the announcement here or check out details on the joint solution here.  You can also register for an upcoming webinar, scheduled for May 27th, from Carpathia and VMLogix here.

Network World recently announced their “15 cloud companies to watch” which tracks innovative vendors offering ways to make the transition to a cloud-based world less daunting. You guessed it…VMLogix LabManager – Cloud Edition (LabManagerCE) made the list. This was great validation as we continue to be committed to offering easy-to-use solutions for organizations moving their workloads to both public and private clouds. In addition to LabManagerCE we offer VMLogix LabManager which can help you transform (and manage) your virtual data center into a private cloud. You can read the Network World article here: http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2010/ndc3/051010-ndc-cloud-companies.html?page=9.

We recently recorded a webcast with Theresa Lanowitz of voke, inc, for the firm’s Virtual Lab Management webcast series. Our webcast, “Hybrid Clouds One Lab: How Do I Justify the Purchase,” is now live and available for viewing on the voke website. The webcast discusses virtual labs in the cloud as well as offers a demo of VMLogix LabManager. As an attendee you will also hear tips on how to justify the purchase of virtual lab technology for your organization.

To register, go here. You can also check out the entire webcast series: http://www.vokeinc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123&Itemid=191.

STAREAST 2010

April 25-30, 2010 in Orlando, FL

Session title: Virtual Test Labs in the Cloud

When: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 1:45-2:45 p.m. ET

Where: Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, FL

Presenter: Jacob Ben-David, Senior Sales Engineer at VMLogix (www.vmlogix.com)

Session overview: In most software engineering organizations, development and test labs continuously demand regular computer, storage, and networking infrastructure upgrades and continuous support. Lab administrators have moved toward server consolidation powered by virtualization platforms from vendors such as Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware, often accompanied by a management layer called virtual lab automation (VLA). Together, virtualization and VLA enable the lab to operate as a private, on-premise cloud. While this solves some problems, there are still other challenges to consider. Some test labs now leverage public cloud infrastructures such as Amazon Web Services. Jacob reviews virtual labs enabled in private, public, and hybrid clouds, and explains how they improve development, build, and test processes. Learn about the key areas of consideration for organizations adopting or evaluating this approach, including security, public cloud infrastructure, operational flexibility, user access models and compliance.

http://www.sqe.com/stareast/

QUEST Dallas 2010

April 19-23, 2010 in Dallas, TX

Session title: Deploying Virtual Lab Automation in Cloud Environments

When: Friday, April 23, 2010 from 9:45-10:45 a.m. CT

Where: Dallas/Plano Marriott at Legacy Town Center in Dallas, TX

Presenter: Sameer Dholakia, CEO of VMLogix (www.vmlogix.com)

Session overview: Development and test labs in software engineering organizations continuously demand computing, storage, and networking infrastructure upgrades and support.  To address the challenges in providing these resources, IT administrators have moved toward lab server consolidation powered by virtualization from vendors like Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware. This lab consolidation is usually accompanied by a management layer called virtual lab automation (VLA).   Together, this enables the lab to operate as a private, on-premise cloud.  Many VLA technologies and products can now leverage public cloud infrastructures such as Amazon Web Services.  This session will review virtual labs enabled in private, public, and hybrid clouds as well as how these virtual labs help the software engineering process of development, build, and test. Sameer will also discuss key areas of consideration for organizations adopting or evaluating this approach including security, the business model benefits of the public cloud infrastructure, operational flexibility, user access models and compliance.

http://www.qaiquest.org/dallas/

Cloud Lab ‘10

April 19-23, 2010

Session title: Virtual Labs in the Cloud

When: Thursday, April 22 at 8 am PT/11 am ET

Where: online; to register, go here: http://www.cloudslamevent.com/cloudslam10/content/cloud-lab-10-admission-ticket

Presenter: Sameer Dholakia, CEO of VMLogix (www.vmlogix.com)

Session overview: Cloud computing is changing the fundamentals of today’s pre-dominantly on-premise hosted data centers. An increasing number of organizations are tapping into the public cloud when internal demand for resources becomes too high or when certain projects require resources beyond what an organization has available. This presentation will review virtual labs and how they can be used across private and public clouds for software development, testing, training and education, support desks, sales demos and IT operations. It will also discuss best practices and key areas for consideration including security, business model benefits, operational flexibility, user access models and organizational compliance.

http://www.cloudslamevent.com/virtual-labs-cloud

One of our customers, gDev FZ-LLC, an outsourcing services firm that leverages a global network of software providers to deliver the highest quality software development, recently did a joint webinar with Amazon and VMLogix to talk about their deployment of VMLogix LabManager – Cloud Edition (LabManagerCE) to manage the company’s virtual labs on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

LabManagerCE acts as the hub of gDev’s automated application lifecycle management (ALM) platform and has enabled gDev to improve development productivity and agility while accelerating software delivery times. To learn more about this deployment and how LabManagerCE works with the Amazon EC2, you can watch the recorded webinar  here.