Virtual Iron Broadens Offering with Version 2.0; Latest Release Adds Support for the AMD Opteron™ Processor and IBM BladeCenter Servers and Extends Policy-Based Management Capabilities

Business Wire, Oct 31, 2005

LOWELL, Mass. -- Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of data center virtualization and management software solutions, today announced general availability of Version 2.0 of its software platform. The new release responds to growing market demand for Virtual Iron's software by adding support for the AMD Opteron(TM) processor and IBM BladeCenter servers. It also expands Virtual Iron's policy-based resource and workload management capabilities to further streamline data center operations.

Virtual Iron offers enterprise-class virtualization and management at the data center level. While first generation technologies are limited to working on single-machines, or with small clusters of machines, Virtual Iron manages the aggregation and sharing of a large number of server, storage and network elements. This automates many time-intensive manual tasks such as provisioning new servers, moving capacity to handle dynamic workloads, and responding to ongoing availability issues. The resulting benefits include reduced data center complexity, increased agility and resource utilization, and dramatically reduced capital and operating expenses.

Version 2.0 responds to increasing market demand for the Virtual Iron solution running on the AMD Opteron, the world's first x86 processor for both 32-bit and 64-bit computing. Enterprises can now use Virtual Iron with both single and Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors, giving customers a choice of industry-standard processors to help drive price performance and improve data center manageability.

"We see a number of enterprises looking to leverage Virtual Iron on the AMD Opteron processor in their data centers," said Joe Menard, corporate vice president, Software Strategy for AMD. "Virtual Iron's support for the AMD Opteron processor, combined with the throughput and performance advantages of AMD's Direct Connect Architecture technology, help provide customers the flexibility and efficiency of a virtualized environment, and at the same time reduce total cost of ownership."

Version 2.0 also extends Virtual Iron's support for IBM servers to include BladeCenter. With integrated I/O interconnects, networking and built-in redundancy, IBM BladeCenter provides a flexible, high performance foundation for utility computing initiatives. Virtual Iron's latest release virtualizes all BladeCenter components, including processors, memory, storage and networking, to speed deployments and migrations, while also providing outstanding scalability. Virtual Iron's policy-based management also makes use of health status information from BladeCenter components to allow automated actions in the event of failures.

Virtual Iron is also delivering new levels of flexibility and operational efficiency for managing complex, enterprise-level workloads such as J2EE application servers with Version 2.0. The software demonstrated excellent performance in a recent benchmark test, SPECjAppServer2004(R), which measures commercial J2EE application servers. The benchmark was created by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC).

"The enhancements we've delivered in Version 2.0 are a natural extension of our core capabilities and a direct response to customer demand," said Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer at Virtual Iron. "These enterprises are moving beyond single-server partitioning and leveraging the full power of data center virtualization and the dramatic gains it offers in agility, performance and operating cost. "

About Virtual Iron Software, Inc.

Virtual Iron provides enterprise-class, data center virtualization and management software solutions that enable companies to dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of managing and operating their data centers. The company serves large organizations in the financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, government, retail and hosted services industries. Virtual Iron is privately held and based in Lowell, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.virtualiron.com or email info@virtualiron.com.

AMD and AMD Opteron are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

IBM and BladeCenter are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation.