The Victorian Government has flagged plans to centralise purchasing of VMware virtualisation software for a number of agencies into a single sizable contract.
The Department of Treasury and Finance issued a request for tender as the lead department looking for the supply of VMware Server Virtualisation Software and Professional Services. The tender closed last month.
The successful respondent will provide VMware licences for 14 government entities, which were not to be bound to a particular hardware vendor. The price for the software was to have a fixed cost for the life of the contract.
The government was also looking for support services for the planning, implementation, installation, configuration and operational support for VMware software products. The move echoes a decision made by the Tasmanian Government last year to make VMware its official virtualisation suite.
VMware launched its new cloud computing system, dubbed vSphere, touting a number of new features. vSphere is scheduled to be released later this quarter, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Melbourne IT have both been involved in the beta testing of the software.
The bureau, which has 70 servers, is currently 95 per cent virtualised. Tony Marion, its director of servers, operating systems and storage, believed the number of servers could come down further, bringing the virtualised percentage to almost 100 per cent.
He also said that the number of management personnel needed to run the environment had been reduced to only six or seven people since adopting VMware, and vSphere functionality would bring that closer to one or a couple of people managing the whole environment.
Glenn Gore, Melbourne IT CTO, was also enamoured of vSphere, telling Marion: "I'm going to race you to the virtual centre."
So why is it VMWare as a vendor doesn't exist on GITC supplier agreements in QLD. This is a specific problem as the VMWare sales team from VMWare can arbitarily change the vendors price to its integrators who then pass on the pricing to the customer. Therefore on a bad month the sales rep can jack up the price accordingly to cover month/quarter end numbers, if the customer has taken time to make a decision penalise the customer with higher prices etc.
There doesn't seem to be anybody pulling VMWare "sales at any cost" mentality down a peg or two and into line with the normal vendor behaviour expected by all customers.
When discussing solutions around VMWare VDI please remember to ask your VMWAre sales rep about the Microsoft license implications for the operating system and applciations as they do not offer this detail (it will kill theirs sales) until it is either way too late and the price ofthe project quadruples or gets shelved.