MSPmentor

A few weeks ago, I started hearing rumblings about managed service platform providers embracing the virtualization market. One of the first movers in this effort is Nimsoft, which today unveiled automation tools for monitoring VMware environments. But Nimsoft won’t be alone for long. Plenty of companies are looking to convergence virtualization with managed services. Here’s a sampling of what to expect.

Nimsoft positions itself as an alternative to big IT management platforms (CA Unicenter, BMC, HP OpenView, IBM Tivoli). While many MSP platform providers focus on small VARs, Nimsoft serves larger integrators. Corporate customers also use Nimsoft’s platform internally to optimize their own networks and applications. Although the company is privately held, Nimsoft has made some bullish statements about its financial performance.

Nimsoft is now striving to deliver the “ultimate” management experience for VMware environments. The company claims its platform can centrally managing virtual and physical IT infrastructure.

MSPmentor can’t directly put those claims to the test, but one thing is clear: The worlds of virtualization and managed services are converging. We expect that to accelerate as bigger software vendors (such as EMC/VMware and Novell) begin to emphasize data center simplification and cloud computing.

EMC in January acquired a company called Pi to round out its cloud computing strategy. And Novell acquired PlateSpin on February 25 in a bid to help businesses more easily manage data centers running Windows and Linux servers.

Also, keep your ears open for security-focused MSP platform providers, which we expect to more aggressively market their wares toward virtualization customers over the next few months.

But in terms of strongly communicating a managed services virtualization strategy, Nimsoft has the microphone — at least for today.