June 2010 Archives

VMware recently published an interesting blog article on how to use VMware vCenter CapacityIQ to right-size VMs. The article highlights that capacity planning in a virtual environment is much more complex than in a physical environment due to shared resources, VM migrations and other factors. It also shows depth of thinking from the VMware product team building VMware vCenter CapacityIQ.

While vendors such as VKernel have dismissed VMware vCenter CapacityIQ as an inferior product, that certainly does not seem to be the case. It's also clear that all virtualization vendors will need to have capacity planning in their arsenal if they want to compete effectively with the expanding VMware management stack.

Our view at Lanamark is that capacity management will ultimately be delivered as a service and hence why Lanamark is focused on enabling IT solution providers delivering desktop and data center optimization services, rather than trying to sell its products directly to enterprises, or competing with partners by bundling services.

Liquidware Labs just added another product to its lineup called "Liquidware Labs Jumpstart." Since there is no mention of partner involvement, it's likely that Liquidware Labs is now offering services directly to customers and competing with its services partners.

And of course Liquidware Labs claims "agent-free design - no software to install, zero resources used" when in reality it continues to use agents. In a recent video, Tyler Rohrer decided to call the Stratusphere agent "virtual agent" rather than completely misleading the audience.

Update (June 25, 2010)

After this blog post went live, Liquidware Labs promptly added "The offering provides for optional integration services from our partner community to help guide your overall project to success." to the desciption of Liquidware Labs Jumpstart. What's interesting is the "optional integration services" statement for an offering Liquidware Labs describes as "Software + Integration Services." The question still stands - does Liquidware Labs deliver services and compete or does it always engage services partners?

Lanamark Suite 2009