Vmware to shine with virtualization innovations at Gitex 2008

A recent IDC study from December 2007 estimates that a quarter of the x86 installed base servers were virtualized by the end of 2007 and that 50% of new servers acquired in the 12 months following the study will be virtualized.

"Through Virtualization enterprises in the Middle East have experienced clear benefits including greater manageability of existing IT infrastructures and reduced cost associated with the powering and cooling of their data centers," said Omar Shihab, Program Manager at IDC.

"We see a huge potential for growth in the region as the highly competitive nature of the market makes virtualization a top priority for the region's enterprises," he added.

Among VMware Middle East customers that have already adopted Virtualization technology are large banks and telecoms operators, including Dubai Islamic Bank, National Commercial Bank and Vodafone Egypt.

"As the cost of powering our MENA call center hub in Egypt continued to rise, VMware's virtualization platform became the obvious solution because it enabled us to significantly reduce our hardware cost, energy consumption and decrease our environmental footprint by minimizing the number of servers used in our datacenter," explained a systems infrastructure expert at Vodafone Egypt.

"Consolidating our server infrastructure has saved us more than $300,000 in hardware costs since 2007. The implementation has also resulted in seriously decreased energy costs, as well as the ability to stay on schedule with our Green Environment Initiative which aims to reduce our CO2 emissions by fifty percent before 2020," he added.

Ghassan Darri, regional manager, Middle East and Africa at VMware, said:

"The Middle East region is now poised to exploit the competitive advantages of virtualization. Unlike many IT departments around the world, customers in the Middle East are building their datacentres from scratch based on virtualization technology so that it is immediately becoming part of their IT fabric. With an optimized infrastructure throughout the lifecycle of their datacenters, Gulf States customers are well poised to deploy technology and applications in a cost effective way, with a low management overhead so that technology becomes a true enabler of their businesses."

At Gitex, VMware will showcase:

1. The next generation of virtualization - a comprehensive roadmap of groundbreaking new products and technologies that expand its flagship suite of virtual infrastructure into a Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS).

2. The vCloud initiative for enterprise class cloud computing infrastructure.

3. The vClient initiative to expand Virtual Desktops to Universal Clients - Desktops that follow the user to any location.

VMware will be in Hall No. 4 at Gitex 2008. Visitors to the stand will be able to meet senior VMware executives from the Middle East and the EMEA region and experience the benefits of virtualization first hand through demonstrations of all of its latest products.