The VAR Guy

VMTurbo has gone from startup to big-time virtualization player over the last year, and now the company has launched VMTurbo Operations Manager 3.0, representing a maturation of its flagship product with enhanced operational features. The VAR Guy spoke to Derek Slayton, VP of marketing, and Bernie Hannon, director of channel sales, about the new announcement. Here’s what VARs should know …

First, a refresher: VMTurbo’s Operations Manager is a downloadable virtual appliance that can be deployed in minutes and offers vendor-agnostic virtualization management capabilities. There’s even a free version available.

Now, VMTurbo Operations Manager 3.0 offers:

• vCLoud Director Integration: For managing cloud operations and tweaking resources for optimal performance.
• Mulit-hypervisor Management: Platform-agnostic integration has been expanded, making VMTurbo’s Operations Manager compatible with all three major virtualization platforms, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer. Visibility into complex virtualization environments now can be done at a glance.
• Application Awareness: Now IT admins or VARs can get information not just about a VM, but also the Windows applications running inside of them. This allows VM resources to be tweaked automatically, according to application need. Although no time frame was given, Slayton noted Linux and Java applications are on deck for the same application-awareness integration.
• Predicative Capacity Planning: VMTurbo Operations Manager now can determine automatically what kind of resources a VM needs based solely on the “workload performance characteristics.” VMTurbo believes this also can help IT admins make educated decisions about the kind of upgrades needed in the future.

So what about the channel? Slayton told our resident blogger that VMTurbo has been focusing on the channel “… more aggressively over the last couple months with Bernie [Hannon] joining,” which is good news, because Hannon is no stranger to the channel. A quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows a long history of channel management, most recently with Citrix before joining VMTurbo. (This represents the second Citrix brass to join VMTurbo, after CEO Lou Shipley took the reins in August 2011.)

More importantly, VMTurbo, which once sold direct, now focuses heavily in the channel. Hannon noted training, partner perks, portal-based registration and other services have made VMTurbo attractive to partners, but the virtual appliance software is what VARs really love. “It appeals as a management tool to a type of partner in the marketplace that has multiple business models,” said Hannon, adding that VARs selling virtual infrastructure also would find a lot of value in VMTurbo’s product for themselves.

But The VAR Guy is all about looking ahead, so what will VMTurbo offer its channel partners to make them want to stick around? Slayton said VMTurbo offers a better value for the cost, and as virtualization technology matures, 2012 is shaping up to be “the year for automation.”  Plus, he said, VMTurbo can get  ”[VARs] out of that day-to-day firefighting,” and focus on more important things.

If want to get automated, you can download the virtual appliance today and start it up.

Read More About This Topic

• Channel Partner Program Roundup: ViewSonic, AGT, VMTurbo
• VMTurbo Adds to Coffers with $10 Million in B-Round Funding
• VMTurbo Adds Global Partners to Expand Footprint Beyond U.S.