Having recently launched VMware Infrastructure 3, the third generation of its
infrastructure virtualization software suite, virtual infrastructure software
provider VMware is aggressively looking at tapping the virtualization market
further.
Mike Clayville, vice-president, VMware Asia Pacific and Japan, and Raghu
Ragharam, vice-president, Data center & Desktop Platforms, spoke to Pragati
Simlote of CyberMedia News about the company's latest offering — the VMware
Infrastructure 3 and its plans for further tapping the virtualization market.
Excerpts:
What would be the role of the Indian market in VMware's growth?
Mike Clayville: India is a very strategic market for us in the APAC. We have
been growing very dramatically worldwide as well as in India. India has a very
steep tradition in IT and IT management. The expertise in Indian market place is
extremely unique and we see that companies here are able to leverage our
technology in some fairly robust ways. We expect that as we move forward, India
will become more and more strategic to the deployment of these technologies.
We have a support center in Bangalore and that facility is growing fairly
dramatically as well. We have made very strategic commitment to Indian market
place around deploying resources out at the center as part of our global
strategy for support. The same thing is true with our own headcount in India, as
we have also grown that very dramatically and we plan to continue to do so. So
we are expanding across all of the major economic centers and are also making
infrastructure investments in India.
How would the companies benefit more from the recently launched VMware
Infrastructure 3 solution?
Raghu
Ragharam: VMware Infrastructure 3 is the third generation of our infrastructure
virtualization software suite. It is an integrated infrastructure virtualization
suite. With VMware Infrastructure 3 a company can aggregate all its hardware in
its data center, all X86 servers and treat it as one pool of resource. So
instead of assigning an application to an individual server, we have now given
the application to VMware Infrastructure 3 software and the software finds the
right location. If that machine fails, it moves that application to other
location, if there is too much load on that machine then also it moves that
application to other location.
The benefit is that it becomes easier for companies to manage their data center.
From an operational efficient point of view it ensures that a company's
applications are always up and running and are getting the right resources that
they need. This is going to let enterprises pretty much virtualize the X86
applications that they have got and secondly help achieve greater degree of
operational excellence in the data center
Secondly, we have also announced a set of pricing and packaging offerings to
help customers to deploy this product pervasively in their enterprises and to
the SMB market.
How big is the virtualization market and how has VMware been performing
lately? Where do you see growth coming from in future?
Ragharam: IDC estimates the worldwide virtualization market to be around $7
billion. VMware reported revenues of $387 for FY 2005, a significant increase
from the FY 2004 revenue of $218 million. In Q1, 2006 the company garnered $135
million revenue. We see enormous growth in this market place worldwide and our
business is distributed across all geographies. We are the undisputed market
leader in this segment and have around 20,000 customers. Our customers are
distributed across commercial, SMBs as well as government segment.
The installed base of physical servers worldwide is around 35 million - 40
million. But we have barely virtualized a small number, so there is an enormous
market potential across all segments — large businesses, SMBs, government, etc.
Specifically with VMware infrastructure 3 we are seeing lot of interest from
large companies for increasing their penetration in the data center,
virtualizing servers outside the data center, etc.
What are the trends in virtualization market and what are your predictions
for the future?
Clayville: We see fairly significant and interesting trends as we move forward
into the release of VMware Infrastructure 3, the third generation of its
infrastructure virtualization software suite. In future we would continue to
enhance our ability to manage and maintain and improve the operational
efficiencies of the X86 architecture.
Raghu: With X86 systems becoming more and more powerful all the time and with
all the power available in these systems, the only way to effectively take
advantage of that is to use a technology like virtualization. So we see
virtualization becoming more and more part of every server.
Secondly, from a customers point of view in addition to make better use of their
hardware, it would also enable them to substantially simplify the way they run
their IT operations. Virtualization would make it much easier for them to keep
the systems up and running and much easier to respond to their client's needs by
bringing in new applications online.
How many partners do you have in India?
Clayville: We have just shy of about 50 partners in India and we are continuing
to grow that fairly dramatically based on the needs in the market place and
demand for services around V. We focus mostly all our energy on developing
unique software solutions and are looking to our partners to provide the
services around our solution to the general market place. As a result we have a
strong and healthy channel that we leverage both for reselling as well as
providing services for virtualization in the Indian market.
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