Roundup: IBM, nlyte, VMware, Viridity

Here’s a roundup of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

IBM introduces Blueworks Live. IBM introduced new software and cloud services that accelerate business processes, helping clients deliver better results and expanding IBM's leadership in business process management (BPM). IBM's new Blueworks Live offering brings together process documentation and social community elements with more than 20,000 members and over 200,000 processes already modeled and documented. "Blueworks Live is a revolutionary tool for the masses, opening the door to valuable business user involvement and insight into processes not addressed by business process management tools in the past," said Marie Wieck, IBM General Manager for Application Integration Middleware.

nlyte awarded U.S. Patent. nlyte Software announced that it has been awarded a patent by the US Patent Office for the auto-allocation of servers to the optimal rack in a data center. This is a key feature in the nlyte Data Center Performance Management (DCPM) suite. The auto-allocation feature uses sophisticated rules-based algorithms to search through the entire data center estate and then automatically finds the optimal location for a server and peripherals based on requirements for power, cooling, space and network connections. “nlyte Software was founded by data center professionals, for data center professionals,” said Jon Temple, nlyte Software president and CEO. “The award of this patent demonstrates our continued ability to focus on, and deliver, intellectual property that helps data center professionals solve real world problems on a daily basis.”

VMware furthers IT as a Service.  VMware (VMW) announced new and enhanced products and programs at VMWorld 2010 Europe Tuesday.  VMware introduced enhanced governance and control for hybrid clouds with vCloud Request Manager, and storage analytics and visualization with vCenter CapacityIQ 1.5.  VMware also announced that European communications provider COLT has signed a customer for their VMware vCloud Datacenter Services pilot environment. VMware has also doubled the number of products available to participants of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) and introduced new, simpler pay-for-use bundles and licensing.

Viridity launches EnergyCheck software. Viridity Software announced the general availability of its EnergyCheck energy efficiency health check application.  The software provides insight into overall energy efficiency and provides the data for discovering hidden opportunities for recapturing power, cooling and space capacity as well as cost savings.  “The EnergyCheck application is in direct response to customers consistently stating the challenges they face by not having a simple, non-intrusive way to understand power consumption and utilization, as well as how to tie IT investments back to the business,” said Steve Keilen, Vice President of Marketing and Inside Sales, Viridity Software.