Nov. 5, 2009 (PR Newswire) -- NORWALK, Conn., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Siemens IT Solutions and Services has concluded a new partnership agreement with VMware to deliver innovative virtualization solutions to the marketplace. The agreement between Siemens IT Solutions and Services and VMware includes developing new offers and implementing a common marketing and sales strategy, and will allow joint customer acquisition.

VMware was a key partner with Siemens in its largest virtualization transformation and project yet completed. Siemens utilized VMware virtualization technology to help transform the Siemens global IT presence into a fully dynamic environment. Through that effort, the two companies have forged very close ties and continue to engage in ongoing product development and testing for their customers.

Also through that effort, Siemens has been able to:

--  Consolidate 11 compute locations into 2
--  Virtualize 10,948 servers and 9,600 applications

--  Standardize on storage utility, application assessment, integrated
lifecycle services and standard services catalog

In doing so, they were able to achieve cost-savings and process efficiencies such as:

--  17:1 Server Compute reduction
--  30% Power and cooling reduction across sample environments
--  45% Floor space reduction through consolidation and virtualization
--  Management and administrative cost reductions of 25% - 35%

--  Accommodation of application lifecycle and disaster recovery services

"Our implementation of VMware technology provides an excellent platform for VMware customers to evolve toward full virtualization in a simple, cost-effective way," said John Hill, Chief Technology Officer for Siemens IT Solutions and Services. "We've implemented virtualization from data centers to the desktop," he said, "and our customers find their IT organizations becoming cheaper, faster and more reliable. We will continue to help our customers improve their speed, agility and flexibility in order to effectively compete on a global basis."

The global economic downturn has increased pressure on companies around the world to reduce IT costs and improve IT service delivery. Virtualization and cloud computing are two emerging megatrends with considerable potential for offering more robust and effective services at a lower cost.

Siemens and VMware are now maximizing their strengths in the management of IT infrastructures and the provisioning of virtualization solutions to deliver more robust product and service offerings to current and future customers.