On 25 February 2010, VMware announced its intent to acquire several EMC Ionix IT management assets for up to $200 million.

With this planned transaction, VMware is establishing a management software organization designed to improve its data center foothold, while enabling a growth path up the management stack. VMware will pick up management software to better compete against Microsoft. Meanwhile, this deal signals that EMC will stick to its strengths in storage management, focus on Vblock management, and not become a broad-based management software challenger to BMC, CA, HP and IBM. While EMC retains licensing and resale rights, VMware will obtain all the technology and intellectual property to more fully manage virtual machines (VMs). Important aspects of the deal include:

• EMC's Server Configuration Manager (SCM), which it acquired from Configuresoft, adds rich Windows compliance and patching capabilities to servers. It will become an add-on for VMware's announced (but undelivered) ConfigControl. ConfigControl will remain focused on the ESX hypervisor platform, and SCM will give it greater visibility into the VMs.
• EMC's Application Discovery Manager (ADM) gives VMware IT service dependency mapping, which will enable it to manage services as opposed to just infrastructure elements. VMware currently OEMs HP's Discovery and Dependency Mapping (DDM) manager for ConfigControl. We expect ADM to replace DDM in a future ConfigControl release.
• FastScale brings a provisioning engine that is already optimized for VMware and supports Linux and Windows. EMC's plans were to blend this with SCM to provide both initial and application provisioning. We expect this strategy to continue with VMware.
• Infra brings an IT service desk suite that we expect over time to be re-architected for the VMware platform. While this doesn't have an immediate effect on the other solutions, we expect VMware to leverage Infra for its governance workflows for a broader virtualization management strategy and to compete with the yet-to-be-delivered Microsoft Service Manager solution.

Gartner believes this deal to be a necessary shift for both companies that will offer new management options for VMware and EMC customers, but it is not without challenges. EMC will need to continue to invest and convince customers it is committed to the network management business beyond storage, as well as ensure that it delivers on its Vblock partnership. VMware says it is committed to supporting customers of acquired technologies. However, VMware will have to resolve overlaps and, more importantly, will need to come to grips with the fact that these solutions support nonvirtual and non-VMware infrastructures, a significant deviation from VMware's strategy to only manage VMware. In addition, SCM and Service Manager have traditionally been sold to the midmarket, which could help VMware compete with Microsoft, but this is not VMware's core target market. Finally, VMware still lacks much-needed event correlation and analysis technology (Smarts will remain with EMC).

• Infra customers: Expect business as usual in the short term but with a platform shift to VMware's stack. However, customers and prospects will need to confirm that Infra will maintain all its configuration management database integration capabilities.
• SCM customers: Get a documented investment road map from VMware within three months of the deal closing to determine if continued use of SCM is a viable business option.
• VMware customers waiting for ConfigControl: Expect plans for HP's DDM to be switched to ADM — but not before the initial shipment of the technology.
• EMC network management customers: Get a documented road map within three months of the deal closing to affirm EMC's commitment to non-storage-related network management. If not satisfied, prepare contingency plans.

• "Why VMware Must Morph Into a Management Company"— At its center, VMware Infrastructure 3 is a virtualization platform that manages computing resources and thus changes how systems management is performed. Although VMware publicly rejects a role as a major management provider, Gartner believes that it will have to embrace this position. By Cameron Haight
• "EMC Uses November 2009 Analyst Day to Emphasize Its Vision for the VCE and the Cloud"— On 10 and 11 November 2009, EMC executives presented the company's strategy to industry analysts. By Donna Scott

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