VMware made its Lifecycle Manager generally available.

It’s supposed to control the virtual environment, showing who owns a virtual machine, when it was requested, who approved it, where it’s deployed, how long it’s been in operation and when it’s scheduled to be decommissioned. It can be used to measure and chargeback VM use to individual departments.

Users can select from a pre-defined menu of virtual machines with different properties such as processor and memory. Requests for VMs are routed and approved to comply with internal policies. It is supposed to automate manual procedures that introduce errors and integrate with existing management tools.

VMware quotes a recent survey indicating that current users expect their virtual machines to grow by 173% over the next two years.