While Microsoft and other agencies have been busy reaching out into the virtual machine infrastructure and management sector, VMware has quietly been working to cement their own considerable lead. Today they have formally announced the release of four new management automation tools for their VMware Infrastructure Platform:

• VMware LifeCycle Manager


• VMware Lab Manager


• VMware Stage Manager


• VMware Site Recovery Manager

These products are all fairly self-explanatory (read more in the press release if you're curious) and all represent the sort of polished, useful management tools that significant VM deployments will require for efficient management. In this respect, VMware continues to position itself as the "grown-up" alternative for businesses rolling out any sort of significant VM infrastructure, and shows that Microsoft and other competitors have a lot of catching up to do to be truly competetive in the market.