The new relationship between VMLogix and Citrix (which is OEM’in LabManager in its Citrix Essentials for XenServer) is generating some interesting developments.
VMLogix announced yesterday the upcoming support for Amazon EC2, the on-demand virtual infrastructure powered by Xen that makes Citrix so proud.
The idea that a virtual lab automation product can create testing and QA virtual machines inside the cloud without wasting money and resources on the on-premises virtual infrastructure is fascinating but not new: Skytap, a younger competitor of VMLogix, is focused on this since day one.
The difference between Skytap and VMLogix anyway is that the former is currently hosting the customers virtual machines on their own virtual data center while the latter is the first virtual lab automation company that hosts them on the most popular (and probably most reliable) 3rd party virtual data center on the market today.
No matter what is the infrastructure backend anyway: like Skytap, VMLogix has to address security concerns and chargeback issues.
Most enterprise customers may be unhappy to manipulate their sensitive data and custom products inside VMs that are somewhere outside the corporate buildings.
On top of that chargeback becomes a must-have feature when you are charged with a pay-per-use pricing model by cloud providers like Amazon.
At the moment LabManager Cloud Edition is available in beta. You can enroll for the program here.
While waiting for the general availability you may want to check this demo or even a whiteboard presentation from the VMLogix CEO that we are featuring on virtualization.tv, the (early beta) virtualization.info TV channel.