After releasing the long awaited VI 3.5 (and its linked ESX Server 3i), VMware is now focused on new products.
As expected after the Dunes Technology acquisition, VMware will enter the so-called VM lifecycle management market, which a horde of startups and consolidated players (Embotics, Fortisphere, ManageIQ, Platform and others) are preparing to invade.
The product, released by Dunes exactly the same day VMware announced the acquisition, was originally called VS-O Lifecycle: a workflow automation tool obtained shaping the well-known orchestration framework, VS-O, Dune’s flagship product.
But VMware is working on a second solution on the same space called Stage Manager.
Stage Manager is designed to manage the worklflow from taking an application from its initial testing, pilot, user acceptance face up to in-production.
Last but not least VMware is preparing a new product for the Apple market called Importer.
Easy to imagine, Importer will allow VMware Fusion customers to import virtual machines created with 3rd party virtualization products (read Parallels Desktop and Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac).
While this last product is already in beta phase (you can enroll for it here), both Dunes Lifecycle Management and Stage Manager are still in stealth mode, and will appear for the first time at VMworld Europe 2008, at VMware Hands-on Labs, as virtualization.info revealed last week.