Building on its June announcement of a data-center strategy, Enterasys Networks has introduced its Data Center Manager, a unified management solution designed to deliver automation, visibility and control over the data center fabric, including network, servers, storage and applications, across both physical and virtual environments. The Siemens Enterprise Communications company says that by providing integrated tracking and monitoring of virtual machines(VMs), applications and an integrated view of virtual server and network environments, DCM allows IT administrators to bring together the 'islands' that exist in the data center. The solution integrates with the leading server virtualization products from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix.
DCM is a tool for tracking and historical reporting on virtual machine movement, allowing users to ensure the proper network resources are allocated when a VM is provisioned, no matter where it is on the network. It provides a unified provisioning process, bridging the traditional divide among the server, networking and storage teams to ensure each has a comprehensive view of virtual server and network environments.
Enterasys has joined a host of vendors currently in or developing similar data-center go-to-market strategies http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-networking-management/cisco-big-pla.... Considering that in a recent InformationWeek survey, a little more than half the respondents, 55 percent, expected to have between 0 and 50 percent of their data center servers virtualized by the end of 2011, the vendors are trying to lead the market by 12-18 months.
Enterasys says its customers and prospects have gone beyond tire-kicking and are in the process of rolling out virtualization capabilities. It said as a networking company, they felt they had to provide a management solution, and is pinning its hopes of differentiation on being standards based, and offering customers choices, rather than locking them in like other vendors.
Charles King, principal analyst, Pund-IT, Inc., says this was an expected development from Enterasys. "The fact is that virtualization has become such a pervasive solution in data centers of every size and kind that it's critical for players in the IT management to offer integrated insight into both physical and virtual IT assets or risk being driven out of business. Enterasys' new solution demonstrates that it understands this common dynamic and has moved proactively to address it. Given the company's connections to Siemens and its list of sizable private and public sector customers, Enterasys should d pretty well."
