Expanding the horizons of virtualization
Describing VMware's products as a "gaming console" and Cenzic's new tools as the "next big game," the executive said that once IT leaders realize that they can use the platforms together to more safely search their production apps for problems, he believes it will prove a significant boon to his company's prospects.

"VMware Lab Manager enables easy reproduction of software defects and security vulnerabilities without disrupting production environments, allowing quick troubleshooting across development and test teams," Brian Byun, vice president of global partners at VMware, said in a statement. "As a result of the integration of Cenzic Hailstorm with VMware Lab Manager, VirtualCenter customers can achieve increased productivity and security test of mission-critical Web applications while continuing normal business operations."

Connected to the VMWare products via an API provided by the virtualization specialist, Cenzic officials said that they would also look to link Hailstorm Enterprise ARC to other similar systems in the future.

VMWare officials cited the Cenzic integration as a solid example of what types of things their products may be used for outside some of the more popular applications for virtualizations tools today, which most often revolve around lowering energy consumption and overhead IT management costs.

In addition to the new VMWare ties, Cenzic also announced an updated user interface for Hailstorm ARC along with new compliance reporting tools for creating vulnerability assessment reports to hand over to third-party auditors.

Industry watchers said that Cenzic's virtualization strategy appears to make a lot of sense and observed that the company's rivals will likely attempt to launch similar products in the future.

However, because two of the company's closest rivals, Watchfire and SPI Dynamics, are involved in the process of being integrated by IBM and HP, respectively, some analysts feel that Cenzic could enjoy a significant lead time over the arrival of those competing technologies.

"It's an innovative approach, and it definitely shows that Cenzic is using the runway that it has in advance of HP and IBM as those companies work to integrate and re-launch the products they've acquired," said Nick Selby, analyst with the 451 Group. "The integration itself is on the API level, so the bar isn't set high in terms of competitors trying to imitate what is being done here, but HP and IBM are pretty occupied and won't be able to make it a priority to do so for a while."

The analyst said that the integration could also help Cenzic and others in the apps testing space break through the existing barrier of whom they can market their tools to inside enterprise IT groups.

"This could be a creative way to get through the barrier that exists around apps testing between operational IT and security teams," Selby said. "It allows the security staff not to have to get authorization from operations to do testing, while it prevents operations from needing to worry about things getting broken during the security scans."