Vizioncore has announced the release of vConverter 3.0, a virtualization conversion tool that the company claims as the "fastest, easiest and most reliable tool" for performing physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to virtual (V2V) machine conversions. The company can also claim wide platform support as it works with many of the leading server virtualization platform vendors: VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and Virtual Iron.

According to the company, based on enterprise-class disk and networking technologies, vConverter allows system administrators to perform either single, multiple or scheduled 'lights out' machine conversions, providing an optimal way of designing and planning conversions to best fit infrastructure management needs.

To find out more information about Vizioncore's latest product and the market space that it is entering, I was able to catch up with Scott Polly, Senior Director of Product Management at Vizioncore, and get some really valuable answers.

Q: What makes Vizioncore's vConverter "the fastest and easiest" P2V tool?

A: First, if you haven’t tried it for yourself, please go to http://www.vizioncore.com/download.html and download a copy. It comes with three free bundled conversions. To comprehensively answer your question, vConverter originally shipped in late 2006, which was prior to VMware shipping its Converter 1.0. Vizioncore's vConverter 3.0 is a mature product with a code base that has converted an estimated 250,000 servers. From then to now we have worked diligently with nearly ten thousand users and have learned a significant amount about what medium and large enterprise customers need when they virtualize their physical infrastructure.

Acquisition/Price is the least of the concerns among this constituency. In fact, did you know that the upfront price of software is less than 10% of the overall cost of software in IT? The cost to maintain that software in people, infrastructure, etc. makes up the lion share of the total cost of ownership picture. As a result, the cost of resources, downtime, errors, failures, infrastructure install requirements, time in overall conversion (including pre- and post-migrations tasks) etc., all add up to a very serious amount of time and money. Moreover, as one of the industry's first software companies, today with more than 7,500 paying customers, we have the unique ability to research features and areas of concern, then approach real customers to verify that what we are building is what people want. vConverter v3 is what customers want for many reasons.

Speed:

We have developed patentable technologies which result in advanced intelligence and efficient handling of the bits and bytes required for virtualizing a customer's physical infrastructure. Another exclusive Vizioncore technology in vConverter 3.0 is vzBoost. vConverter incorporates vzBoost which is a kernel level driver that speeds up all writes to the VMFS to reduce bottlenecks and this results in increased speed to VMware ESX Server.

Ease of use:

We have always maintained a reputation for being the easiest to use and have many testimonials to this effect. Offering multiple interface options (wizards, single, multiple simultaneous and/or scheduled conversions, drag'n'drop, CLI, et al), as well as the automation of numerous pre/post conversion tasks, enables any level of user to maximize his or her time and effectiveness with the tool.