ACADEMIA

Platform Computing, the global leader in grid computing solutions, today announced Platform VM Orchestrator (VMO), an automated, policy driven environment manager for virtual infrastructures. As the migration towards virtual computing accelerates, enterprises must increasingly take steps to improve virtual machine (VM) availability, increase automation and better manage disparate environments. With the introduction of Platform VMO, users can easily automate tasks and improve efficiency through making more proactive decisions, minimize risk through high availability of critical applications, and protect existing investments through centralized management of diverse VM environments. Built on Platform Enterprise Grid Orchestrator (EGO), Platform VMO provides the underpinning technology for businesses to fully harness their IT resources and seize the cost and efficiency benefits of a virtual environment. Key benefits for Platform VMO include: -- Dynamic balance and control of all resources in real time for optimal quality of service and simplified configuration and management -- Auto-provisioning according to business policies for improved capacity utilization and reduced man-hours -- High availability for mission critical applications through an adaptive environment that responds to changing business needs -- Support for heterogeneous virtual machine environments, with initial support for VMware environments and others to follow -- Scalable foundation through Platform EGO technology with the ability to easily expand and support virtual machine environments from multiple vendors "The move to virtual infrastructure environments creates new opportunities for enterprises with increased productivity and efficiency in their data centers," said Dan Chu, Senior Director of Global Alliances at VMware "We believe that an application-aware optimization approach combined with VMware virtual infrastructure, as promoted by Platform's VM Orchestrator, can more rapidly deliver these benefits for customers deploying an enterprise grid computing architecture." Platform VMO is built on Platform Enterprise Grid Orchestrator (EGO) technology, the first and only grid platform for the virtualization, automation and sharing of all IT resources for every enterprise application. Platform EGO is a single IT management environment that leverages commercial grid technology to enable enterprises to align and re-align resources with real-time changes in demand. "The acceleration and widespread adoption of virtual machines signals the start of a technology disruption that will have a profound impact on how we design, build and manage enterprise IT environments," said Bob Shecterle, Vice President, Marketing, Platform Computing. "With the introduction of Platform EGO technology, through Platform VMO, we have the ability to redefine the rules for VM management, allowing our customers to more easily harness the full potential of their virtual IT resources." "As virtualization technologies multiply in the data center, the importance will rise of selecting tools that integrate, coordinate or administer the growing chaos," said Carl Claunch, Vice President and Research Director, Gartner. Platform VM Orchestrator will be available in fall 2005. For more information please visit www.platform.com.