Virtualization isn't just for server consolidation anymore. Software companies are identifying and addressing other important gaps in the marketplace where virtualization can fit in to solve a problem. One such area is in the software development and testing process. Leveraging virtualization tools, software developers and QA team members can streamline their application development and testing cycles. Rather th Virtualization isn’t just for server consolidation anymore. Software companies are identifying and addressing other important gaps in the marketplace where virtualization can fit in to solve a problem. One such area is in the software development and testing process. Leveraging virtualization tools, software developers and QA team members can streamline their application development and testing cycles. Rather than spending valuable work cycles building and configuring environments over and over again, software engineers can instead focus on the work they were hired and trained to do – testing and development. This improves the software development life cycle, lowers the cost of developing and testing the application, speeds up the process of detecting and correcting software bugs, and should bring a more refined, finished software product to market in a timelier manner. VMworld 2006 turned out to be a great place to showcase this type of technology. VMware used VMworld 2006 to introduce everyone to VMware Lab Manager, the company’s new software development life-cycle management platform that was acquired back in June from Akimbi Systems. Also in attendance was Surgient, long time provider of virtual lab management applications that automate the deployment, configuration and teardown of complex enterprise software environments or “virtual labs” on demand. And making its presence known to the show’s attendees, Bangladore, India-based VMLogix announced the North American launch of its own solution, interestingly enough, also called LabManager. VMLogix LabManagerVMLogix LabManager provides users with an innovative software lifecycle management solution that fully leverages emerging virtualization platforms, including Microsoft and VMware, and provides complete support for physical machines. With VMLogix LabManager, developers, testers and IT operations staff can ensure rapid, highly repeatable, resource-optimized deployments of complex, multi-machine software test environments.Ravi Gururaj, CEO and founder of VMLogix said “VMLogix LabManager reduces costs, improves software quality and accelerates application release times. With this launch, developers now have a user-friendly, efficient framework, which helps them virtualize and simplify the software development lifecycle processes.” Surgient VQMSBack in October, Surgient announced the 5.0 version of its Surgient Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System (VQMS) while at Mercury World 2006. The release added enterprise-class functionality and scalability, including broad support for complex heterogeneous environments and advanced management capabilities for image and policy-based resource management, such as dynamic pooling, scheduling and calendaring, remote access and comprehensive, customizable reporting tools. When asked about the new competition entering the market, Erik Josowitz, Vice President of Marketing at Surgient, said “The new products, VMware Lab Manager and VMLogix LabManager, further validate Surgient’s vision of applications that put virtualization technology to work. Surgient pioneered virtual lab management beginning in 2003, so it’s great to see the market expand to support new lab management offerings.” VMware Lab ManagerVMware Lab Manager automates the setup, capture, storage, and sharing of multi-machine software configurations, and then provides development and test teams with access to specific configurations through a self-service interface. It extends the power of VMware Infrastructure and offers a number of added benefits. The product uses a shared pool of server, networking and other software lab resources and allocates them to teams on an as-needed basis to help with asset utilization. It also helps to “close the loop” between development and test in terms of defect reporting, verification and resolution by taking snapshots of complex configurations exhibiting problems and then assigning that snapshot a LiveLink URL that can be entered into a bug report. This seamless sharing of the actual defect environment reduces the time required to reproduce, troubleshoot and correct the reported bug. Another added benefit is the additional flexibility gained with outsourcing development and/or QA. VMware Lab Manager provides secure remote access to a software lab that can host remote developer desktops and provide remote access to shared complex lab configurations. This eliminates the time-consuming and costly replication of equipment in offshore or outsourcing partner labs, and it provides flexibility to rapidly add, remove or replace outsourced resources as business requirements change. VMware Lab Manager went into a private beta in the third quarter of this year, and the public beta version is now available for immediate download. VMware Lab Manager is expected to be generally available in December 2006. The solutions from Surgient and VMLogix are available now. Software Development