VMware Unveils VMware vSphere 4
 

VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced VMware vSphere 4, the industry's first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service. With a wide range of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 brings cloud computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way – delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while preserving customer choice.

The company articulates that as the complexity of IT environments has continued to increase over time, customers' share of IT budgets are increasingly spent on simply trying to ''keep the lights on.'' With the promise of cloud computing, customers are eager to achieve the benefits, but struggle to see the path to getting there. It further states that leveraging VMware vSphere 4, customers can take pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT environments. The company claims that  with these ''internal'' clouds, IT departments can dramatically simplify how computing is delivered in order to help decrease its cost and increase its flexibility, enabling IT to respond more rapidly to changing business requirements.

''Since pioneering virtualization for x86 systems 10 years ago, VMware has delivered an impressive list of 'industry-firsts' – the first hypervisor, the first VMotion capability now synonymous with VMware, and the first platform for pooling servers, storage and network, allowing customers to decrease the capital and operating cost of computing by up to 60-70 percent,'' said Paul Maritz, President and Chief Executive Officer, VMware. ''VMware vSphere 4 is the next evolution along this path of innovation. By giving IT organizations a non-disruptive path to cloud computing, we will be leading our customers on a journey that delivers value every step of the way, delivering up to an additional 30 percent cost reduction today while enabling IT to provide reliable and adaptable IT services.''

FICO, the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology to the world's top banks and credit card issuers, commented on how VMware vSphere 4 will improve the efficiency of its business.

''As a critical player in the global financial services ecosystem, we require flexibility and standards to stretch the limits of our IT resources and adjust to the unknown,'' said Christopher Rence, CIO, FICO. ''With VMware vSphere as the foundation of our cloud computing initiative, we're now in a better position to deliver a unified platform that enables the world's top financial services institutions to make effective and confident decisions at all stages of the customer lifecycle.''