Apparently willing to pick a fight with Oracle, VMware is offering customers of Oracle's Virtual Iron (VI) acquisition a 40% discount off the list price of its vSphere 4 and vCenter software and a 10% discount on service contracts.

Oracle effectively killed the Virtual Iron product line on July 1 so it can suck up VI's Xen-based technology into its own Xen-based server virtualization and management gear.

The abrupt cancellation of new licenses and Oracle's hazy migration plans made it seem like it doesn't care whether VI's 2,000-3,000 customers drift away in the process.

VMware's "Safe Passage" offer is good till September 30.

See www.vmware.com/go/safepassage.

Vizioncore Named Bronze Sponsor of SYS-CON's Virtualization Expo
SYS-CON Events announced today that Vizioncore, an industry leader which is helping thousands of organizations maximize their ROI from their investments in virtualization, named "Bronze Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 7th International Virtualization Conference & Expo colocated with the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, which will take place on November 2 - 4, 2009, Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California.

The event is expected to attract over 1,500 developers, engineers, architects, IT managers, and hardware and software professionals of every stripe.

Leading the way in providing software solutions that extend, enhance and improve virtual environments, Vizioncore Inc. has grown into an industry leader which is helping thousands of organizations maximize their ROI from their investments in virtualization. With a comprehensive set of solutions that automate complex processes and address IT challenges of P2V/V2V conversions, disaster recovery, storage optimization, process automation and provisioning, and performance monitoring and chargeback, Vizioncore helps organizations leverage virtualization to achieve new levels of productivity and efficiencies in their IT systems.

Founded in 2002, Vizioncore has been instrumental in helping virtualization customers solve "real world" problems with smart, but easy-to-use, easy-to-afford software. As a VMware Community Source member and Technical Alliance Partner of VMware, and as a highly active and recognizable member of the virtualization user community, Vizioncore has delivered a set of solutions that have become industry standard and essential to running robust virtual environments.

Headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, Vizioncore is a fully owned subsidiary of Quest Software, a leading global enterprise systems management vendor with deep expertise in IT operations. Vizioncore has locations throughout the world and Vizioncore's products are available through its global Partner Network channel.