HotLink, the two-year-old start-up, has updated its flagship SuperVisor for VMware product first released last year. It's the only solution that can extend VMware's vCenter so it supports other hypervisors natively.

The new SuperVisor for VMware 1.5 delivers advanced vCenter features like live migration (ya know, vMotion) to cross-platform virtual infrastructures including Microsoft's Hyper-V, Citrix' XenServer and Red Hat's Enterprise Linux (KVM) virtual machines within homogeneous clusters.

CEO Lynn LeBlanc says half the enterprise is using two or more hypervisors for different user populations and different critical workloads. For instance, as one might imagine, Exchange is better with Hyper-V.

There are other concerns too like fear of vendor lock-in and differences in cost and SLAs. (Imagine replacing some of the pricier VMware deployments with Microsoft since you've already got a Microsoft enterprise license while still being able to use vCenter. Neat huh. And think of the ROI.)

HotLink's way users get unified management since the widgetry all works off of vCenter's management console instead of being silo'd. The company says, "Ultimately, data centers need tools that enable a consistent approach to managing all virtual workloads."

Anyway, VMware's management capabilities are regarded as more robust than other people's. And since HotLink provides native hypervisor interoperability lock-in chances are supposedly eliminated.

The HotLink widgetry, which isn't beholden to any VMware input, now also provides a Snapshot Manager so administrators can create, utilize and manage cross-platform snapshots inside the vCenter console and a Template Manager so users can create and deploy a single template across all target hypervisors instead of having to build and maintain platform-specific virtual machine templates.

The 1.5 upgrade starts at $25,000 for a perpetual license or $6,000 for an annual subscription.

LeBlanc sold FastScale Technology to EMC a few years ago and EMC passed it along to VMware. HotLink customers reportedly include technology, financial services and telecom companies. Its advisory board includes people from Facebook, E*TRADE, Clorox, Citrix, BMC and Flextronics.