VMware continues to barrage customers with more and more management products.

The software maker has used its European user conference this week to start early discussions around VMware Lifecycle Manager and Site Recovery Manager. These packages will join the Manager family that already includes Lab Manager and Stage Manager. All we need next is Manager Manager.

What you really get on those Microsoft, Novell and Cisco courses...

Microsoft has published an article on speeding up Vista, aimed at general users.

It's not too bad. Here's the summary:

When I was young I built up a collection of system error messages. Ok, look, it's not as sad as collecting stamps! It is? Really? Oh well, never mind. Anyway, my recent piece about Borland putting rude words in Quattro Pro got me thinking it was time to revisit that collection.

VMware this week let loose yet another management product, which pushes the virtualization specialist deeper into the data center. Say 'hello' to the beta of VMware Stage Manager.

Book extract, part 3 To get from use cases to detailed design (and then to code), you need to link your use cases to objects. The technique we describe in this chapter, robustness analysis, helps you to bridge the gap from analysis to design by doing exactly that.

Those awfully nice folks at Serena Software have promised to cut your workload with tools that'll let non-IT staff take care of tedious, line-of-business Office applications.

Interop The virtualization hypervisor belongs in server hardware - not in the operating system. So says Xensource, friend and partner of the operating system giants Microsoft, Red Hat and Novell.

"Hypervisor will be delivered in hardware. In my view, it's a separate layer [from the operating system] because it's part of the box," Crosby told several hundred people gathered for his Interop keynote at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. "Platform virtualization is here to stay."

Analysis Pop quiz. You’re a $7bn software company that has all the sex appeal of a shy potato. What do you do?

Buy XenSource, of course.

Book review We recently reviewed Service Strategy, the first book in the latest refresh of ITIL – the IT Infrastructure Library.

This time, we are looking at Service Design, the next book, which starts to look at the practicalities of integrating IT into the business. Note: not "aligning IT with the business" any more. The world has moved on.

Updated: SAP is offering €4.8bn (£3.3bn) for Business Objects - a strategy change for the German company which usually develops technology inhouse rather than making big purchases.

IBM has abandoned a ludicrous attempt to patent outsourcing after an internet outcry.

Big Blue submitted this highly original invention to the US Patent office in January 2006. Its principal claim was for "a method for identifying human-resource work content to outsource offshore of an organisation".

Businesses that dominate the global economy have no idea what the financial value of their IT assets is, according to a new study.

Although firms spend billions of dollars on IT each year, few businesses are able to pinpoint the value of their technology assets compared to cash, brand, property and intellectual property, according to UK software developer Micro Focus.

Reg Technology Panel It's been well over a year since we asked for your views on the organisations you buy IT products and services from. But today sees the welcome return of our The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Vendor survey.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly helps us paint a picture of the supplier landscape, praising those that are performing, shaming those that aren't - and getting a handle on how relevant those so called "hot topics" we all keep hearing about really are.

So what are you waiting for? The survey should take you no more than 10 minutes to complete, but it does depend on how much you want to put in. Click here to get started.

The results will be posted as soon as our number bods have finished crunching all your data, so make sure you keep checking The Register for what is shaping up to be an interesting read.

Last year we were inundated with responses, and if you haven't seen them already a copy of last year's results can be downloaded here. ®

Office 2.0 Conference Apple is facing fresh calls to open the iPhone as new evidence emerged of the technical and legal challenges developers face putting their software on the device.

Delegates attending the Office 2.0 Conference have voiced concern over the iPhone's closed architecture, lack of developer tools, and the fact its version of Apple's Safari browser lacks common web plug ins they said needlessly complicate the process of porting software and online services to the device.

Microsoft's virtualization team has finally stirred as the market gears up for VMworld next week. A bundle of announcements today include a virtulization management software released to manufacturing, solidified pricing and licensing, and promises for future versions.

Let's dive in:

Virtual Machine Manager 2007

After two years of development, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (SCVMM) has popped out of the oven. The software can be downloaded now from the Microsoft system center site and will be generally available in October.

SCVMM is a standalone server app for managing a virtual environment running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. The software allows customers to assess and consolidate workloads on virtual machines — which frees up physical resources and all that good stuff virtual managers do. The appeal is the tight integration with System Center and other Microsoft products one might be using in the data center.

In bullet points, the release adds up thusly:

• Centralized virtual machine deployment and management.
• End-to-end support for consolidating physical servers into a virtual environment
• Physical-to-virtual conversion and virtual-to-virtual conversion of VMware virtual machines to Microsoft VHD format
• Intelligent placement of workloads on the best-suited physical host servers

The System Center family has received a new licensing system, which should be more flexible for a virtual environment.

System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise, which includes SCVMM 2007, is priced at $860 plus two years of service, and will allow an unlimited amount of operating systems (physical and virtual) per physical device. The package will be available starting October 1.

For mid-market customers, Microsoft has announced SCVMM 2007 Workgroup edition, which will be available in January 2008. This flavor allows for up to five physical host servers and an unlimited number of virtual machines. The software will be priced at $499.

Next SCVMM to support VMWare and Xen formats

Microsoft has also announced some plans for the next version of SCVMM, which will be released in Windows Server 2008. The software promises to support Windows Server virtualization, as well as a few third-party formats, including VMware, Viridian and Xen.

Chris Stirrat, head of the SCVMM team contemplates this news on their blog in the stoic fashion you'd expect from...

"We listened to you!!! And when I say we will manage these environments I mean really manage them – covering all the key scenarios they offer.

The company plans to give an update on this scheme when the software enters beta 1, which is scheduled for Q1 2008. ®

Microsoft's PR machine is spinning a major setback into a minor victory for ratification of its proposed OOXML specification as an international standard.

The software giant has been left to draw comfort from the high level of voter turnout by standards aficionados across the globe, rather than applaud the hoped for, speeded up adoption of Office Open XML (OOXML) as an ISO standard.

E-learning firm SkillSoft saw its profits nearly treble in its latest set of results, which were released on Friday.

SkillSoft had net profits of $12.4m, or $0.11 per share, for the second quarter, up from $4.8m, or $0.05 per share, for the same period last year. The New Hampshire based firm's revenue for the three-month period ended 31 July was $71.5m, up 28 per cent on the second quarter of the previous year.

A less-annoying version of Windows Vista is still several months away.

This morning, with a post to the official Windows Vista blog, Microsoft said that the first Vista Service Pack will likely arrive at the beginning of the year, after the usual far-flung beta test. As SP1 betas continue to turn up on file-sharing sites across the web, the company will roll out an official beta "in the next few weeks," hoping to iron out more than a few kinks in the little-used operating system.

A new software tool has been released by Linchpin Labs that allows the loading of unsigned and legacy drivers on Windows XP, 2003, and most importantly Vista.

OSCON BMC Software has kicked off a formal open source strategy by launching a developer network and promising to license projects under BSD.

Virtualization has become somewhat of a Wild West for the data center market, promising streets paved with gold for IT groups - and endless riches for the vendors hawking this new-age server slicing technology.

But as the virtualization frontier swells with shops and vendors staking claims to their real estate, it's clear that something in the data center needs to take charge of it all. Something needs to be the central point for monitoring and managing virtual machines and applications.

But there's only room for one sheriff in this town.

Considering the technical complexity of modern commercial aircraft and the operational complexities of running any airline service, it may seem surprising - especially to anyone steeped in the ways of business and/or operational automation - to consider the level to which a commitment to paper is maintained.

Most of the documentation associated with getting a modern jet off the deck and safely back down again is still based on paper.

There are some very good reasons for this, not least that paper-based operational procedures are still remarkably robust in terms of auditing adherence to procedures that can make the difference between life and death. But automation and online "paperless" operations are now at last starting to creep in to the process.

US software tools builder Sybase plans to move beyond its database roots and challenge the leaders in enterprise software development.

The company says the latest release of its PowerDesigner modelling tool transforms what is traditionally thought of as a data modelling tool into a full-blown enterprise modelling tool.

WPC Microsoft has delivered a spirited defense of its Windows virtualization roadmap, blaming misreporting - not internal disorganization - for causing confusion.

Andy Lees, corporate vice president for server and tools marketing and solutions, claimed that recent press coverage saying Microsoft's virtualization architecture wouldn't provide migration is "inaccurate".

It's upgrade time for VMware's Lab Manager package.

The soon-to-IPO company this week pumped out Version 2.5 of its test and development product. The new code includes support for more storage systems, more OSes and more automation. It's a more story likely to please companies struggling with a mess of hardware in their test and dev setups.

Reinforcing its status as the software darling of the moment, VMware has secured a whopping $219m investment from Intel.

Intel will pay $23 per share for close to 10 million shares in the virtualization software maker, giving it a 2.5 per cent stake in all the outstanding common stock. In addition, Intel's deep pockets have purchased a board seat at VMware. This deal comes as VMware, an EMC subsidiary, approaches an IPO (initial public offering).

The long-rumoured and speculated Initial Public Offering (IPO) by Netsuite, the software as a service (SaaS) specialist, is at last underway. and it looks like it will use a novel way to determine the share price and the volume of shares to be issued.

The company has taken the first step in the IPO process by filling out a Form S-1 for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This is the statement of intent to go for an IPO, and the actual process will only be initiated when the SEC has approved the application.

Calling all BOFHs

We got a survey that wants filling in. Help us out and we'll make sure to demand that your bosses give you lots of goodies next month when we write our annual sysadmin appreciation day article.

Sounds like a deal? So if you have anything to do with systems management and/or support, form an orderly line to participate in latest Reg survey here.

USENIX Operating systems aren't so great. They lounge like bloated monarchs on a database server — getting far more credit than they're worth. Clutched in their sausage fingers are the keys to a kingdom far too vast to properly manage.

But Stanford professor Mendel Rosenblum believes virtualization may be the guillotine that cuts the OS reign down to size. Rosenblum, who is also a founder of VMware, called for heads to roll during his opening keynote at the USENIX conference in Santa Clara...Virtually roll, of course.