Kodak, through a strategic partnership with VMware, is launching its first Virtual Operating Environment option for Kodak Unified Workflow Solutions. This new feature enables significant cost savings, increased efficiency and failover protection by hosting multiple “virtual” servers simultaneously on a single physical server.

　　Servers hosting the Kodak Prinergy Connect workflow and Kodak InSite prepress portal can be managed and expanded more efficiently with this option. Users can minimize downtime by subscribing to an option that employs redundant virtual servers.

　　“The power of virtualization is something we started looking at a couple of years ago,” says Rick Walch, IT director for Colortek in St. Louis. “The Kodak Virtual Operating Environment enables us to scale our business to deliver growth while enhancing our operations from both a management and business continuity standpoint. The technology is seamless to our clients, but it is something that has clearly given us a competitive advantage.” Colortek’s 60 employees provide premedia services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to a variety of clients from its two facilities.

　　In a typical Virtual Operating Environment configuration, a single physical server hosts two Prinergy Connect workflows (a primary and secondary server) and an Insite system, providing a powerful Kodak Unified Workflow Solution in one-third the physical space with one-third the energy consumption for server power and cooling. License fees are similarly reduced, and maintenance and operations are more manageable because there are fewer servers to install, support and upgrade.

　　The Virtual Operating Environment technology is made possible through Kodak’s strategic partnership with VMware. VMware’s suite of virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions addresses a range of information technology problems that include cost and operational inefficiencies, business continuity, software lifecycle management and desktop management.