VMware targets SMBs with fresh cloudy products

VMware is making a bigger push for the SMB space with the launch of two new products for that market.

In a presentation at VMWorld, Vmware CTO, Steve Herrod said that the company had launched VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus and has made enhancements to its VMware Go Pro service.

VMware Go Pro, which was first launched in January of this year, is a cloud-based management tool that has been developed to allows SMEs to manage both physical and virtual machines.

VMware has developed a range of new features for the product including: IT Advisor for scanning a customer's physical and virtual infrastructure to provide guidance on customers' virtualisation environments. According to Herrod, the product will scans the environment, it will provide new options, recommendations and alerts to help customers quickly identify and solve problems.

In addition to this, the updated asset and patch management capabilities will allow users to create and label groups of machines and then schedule patch scans and deployment for these groups.

For VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus, VMware is bulding on technology it acquired when the company bought Shavlik in May.

Unlike Go Pro, this is an on-premise management system offering agentless, easy-to-deploy and cost-effective management of physical and virtual machines.

New features in VMware vCenter Protect Essentials Plus will include: new scripting capabilities allowing users to execute scripts across the entire network. A scripts catalogue will help administrators automate tasks such as configuration, maintenance, support and network information.

In addition, the product will offer a "Power Status" scan to examine the power status of machines across the network and a new console to allow multiple administrators to simultaneously perform different tasks at the same time.