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VMLogix Gets Ready For The Hybrid Cloud

Sameer Dholakia of VMLogix is not the most prominent spokesman for virtualization. But his firm's product, LabManager, supplies a strong core function--provisioning the virtual server. Furthermore, VMLogix doesn't care whether it’s a VMware, Citrix or Microsoft virtual machine, making Dholakia one of the few CEOs with a vision of a multi-hypervisor future.

In February, Citrix Systems turned to VMLogix to OEM LabManager's capabilities in Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V. VMLogix' LabManager is one of the few products of the type that has been certified as ready to work with IBM's Rational tools, including Rational Quality Manager.

Although it's a core data center function now, there are not that many virtual lab managers out there. Surgient, founded in 2003, was a pioneer in this field with its Lab Management Platform, and VMware, through its acquired Akimbi configuration mapping technology, got its own Lab Manager product out the door in November 2006. VMLogix followed in July 2007, adopting a multi-hypervisor, full life cycle approach to virtual machine minting.

Now VMLogix has a cloud product in alpha test, VMLogix Hybrid Cloud, which is intended to be able to provision a virtual machine for either the private cloud or public cloud, adopting the user's preference of virtual machine type.

"Our hybrid cloud solution will allow a user to manage an internal or external virtual machine from the same pane of glass. Certain types of users will need different types of public clouds," and being able to provision the appropriate virtual machine for each will be a core function, he said in a recent interview.

As enterprise data centers become more virtualized, it will become easier, he thinks, to coordinate their operation with some external resource. Companies in the future will try to trim their data center operations back to "a steady state of 30-40% of peak loads," shifting the rest to pay-as-you-go operations in the cloud. Doing so will allow the average IT organization to recoup a big part of the expense its been using to overprovision servers for peak loads.

"We think this hybrid model is the right answer in the long run," says Dholakia, and he wants his firm out front in offering the management tools to enable it. VMLogix' Hybrid Cloud will monitor the "steady state" virtual machines operating internally and the "cloudburst" workloads shipped off to the public cloud.

It's one way the future may evolve, and Dholakia says VMLogix will be ready for it with its hybrid cloud system in the fourth quarter.

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