Management Take Center Stage At VMworld
"The differentiation between the different vendors will be the management tools," said Philip Dawson, research vice president at Gartner.
If VMware wants to remain the virtualization leader, and stay ahead of companies like Microsoft, Sun and Oracle, it has to keep developing management products at a fast pace, Dawson said.
But VMware isn't alone in trying to improve the management of virtualized environments. Late last year Microsoft announced System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
"For customers, there is today a trade-off between the best vitalization tools and some OS management with VMware and the best OS management and good tools for virtualization with Microsoft," Dawson said.
But irrespective of the vendor, better management tools are needed. Effective management is still one of the biggest challenges when companies move to a virtualized environment. According to a recent survey by CA, more than half of chief executive officers and IT executives polled say they face challenges related to or are uncertain of the effectiveness of their approach to managing virtual servers.
