Last week, in addition to announcing its latest virtualization platform update, VMware also announced its plans to go after the SMB market with a new set of offerings that target those companies and their efforts to tackle virtualization projects. The packages are being called "acceleration kits" and they are based on VMware's Infrastructure 3 virtualization suite. These packages offer various levels of features Last week, in addition to announcing its latest virtualization platform update, VMware also announced its plans to go after the SMB market with a new set of offerings that target those companies and their efforts to tackle virtualization projects.The packages are being called “acceleration kits” and they are based on VMware’s Infrastructure 3 virtualization suite. These packages offer various levels of features and functionality based on pricing. Packages include: VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit: Three 2-processor licenses of VMware Infrastructure Foundation—which includes VMware ESX Server, VMware Consolidated Backup, VMware Update Manager, VMware Virtual SMP, VMware VirtualCenter agent and VMware VMFS—as well as VMware VirtualCenter Foundation Server, which includes VMware Guided Consolidation and the ability to manage up to three VMware Infrastructure server hosts. List price is $2,995. VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit: Two 2-processor nodes of VMware Infrastructure Standard, which includes the above features of the VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit plus VMware High Availability (HA). List price is $5,995. VMware Infrastructure 3 Midsize Acceleration Kit: Three 2-processor nodes of VMware Infrastructure Enterprise—which includes the above features of the VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit plus VMware VMotion, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), VMware Storage VMotion and VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM), an experimental feature—as well as flexible training and consulting credits that can be applied to classes to learn how to deploy and use VMware Infrastructure 3, such as the “VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configuration” course. List price is $14,495. VMware hopes that introducing new technology such as their embedded VMware ESX Server 3i firmware hypervisor, the company can continue to maintain their market lead over competitors such as XenSource, Virtual Iron and Microsoft. To that end, VMware ESX Server 3i will help SMBs by removing the complexity of installing and configuring the hypervisor, and allowing for those companies to more easily and quickly deploy virtualization in their environments. To further ease SMB transition from the physical to the virtual world, VMware is offering VMware Guided Consolidation which is designed to enable companies to more easily migrate from physical servers to virtual infrastructures using a step-by-step wizard that identifies physical servers for consolidation, converts them to virtual machines and intelligently places them onto the most ideal VMware ESX Server or VMware Server host. And VMware Update Manager will automate patch and update management for VMware ESX Server hosts and virtual machines and is designed to relieve the significant pain point of tracking patch levels and manually applying security and bug fixes. According to industry analyst firm The Yankee Group, virtualization deployments among SMBs — companies with less than 100 servers or fewer than 1,000 employees — is expected to double during the next two years. This group is critical to VMware’s continued expansion as the company is already implemented in most of today’s Fortune 1000 businesses. This SMB market is where XenSource and Virtual Iron have hammered down stakes in the ground – so this is clearly VMware’s loudest attempt at combating the “we are 1/5 the price of VMware” message that competitors have been using.So is the pricing right? What about the acceleration kit messaging? Software Development