VMware announced Tuesday that it has upgraded key elements of its virtualization software, including vCloud Automation Center 6.0, vCenter Operations Management 5.8, and vCenter Log Insight 1.5. Its moves marked a turn toward managing workloads in more mixed, hybrid cloud environments.
At VMworld in San Francisco in August, VMware revealed enhancements to the data center’s virtualization infrastructure. As VMworld Europe opens this week in Barcelona, it marks VMware’s increased emphasis on enabling IT as a service and hybrid cloud management, said Martin Klaus, VMware group product marketing manager.
In addition, VMware is making a more direct bid to become the manager of non-VMware hypervisors and other resources. “With this release, we can handle not only virtualization management but support for heterogeneous, public cloud services,” said Klaus in an interview.
VCloud Automation Center 6.0 now has an employee self-service catalog for IT services. An employee can order a backup service, a storage service, a mailbox, “anything as a service from a single catalog,” Klaus said. The catalog support is provided by vCloud Application Director, now part of Automation Center. It allows the rapid release into production of new applications and support for DevOps-style frequent updates of applications.