LAS VEGAS -- Virtual lab test software maker Surgient plans to announce this week updates to its flagship software that the vendor says will speed the deployment of virtual environments and offer IT managers more platform support.

Surgient, an HP partner at that vendor’s Software Universe conference, announced it would release updated software in August designed to help IT managers replicate a broader set of server configurations in a virtual-lab environment. The company updated its Virtual Lab Management Applications suite of three applications: Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System (VQMS), Virtual Training Lab Management System targeted for hands-on training in labs and Virtual Demo Lab Management System aimed at the enterprise software vendors to test their products.

The VQMS application, which installs on a server and uses a customer's existing virtualization infrastructure, speeds the test process for enterprise IT managers by consolidating test infrastructure and making it possible to automate the setup and teardown of complex test configurations on-demand.

"We worked at expanding the heterogeneity of the product, supporting 64-bit across the board and providing the flexibility to our customers to choose the infrastructure and environment they use to test," says Marcus MacNeill, director of product strategy at Surgient.

With this release, Surgient included a feature that lets IT managers define the network topologies within the Surgient interface and not within the virtual environment, which the MacNeill says allows IT managers to create "much more complex application technologies." Surgient also provided more remote access capabilities that the company says enables "global access to a centrally deployed virtual lab anytime from anywhere."

Surgient, which competes with Akimbi technology acquired by VMware, also added reporting capabilities that let IT managers extract business intelligence and usage information from, say, CRM systems and enterprise dashboards.

Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications Version 5.3 is expected to be available in August, with support for VMware ESX Server 3 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2006. Workgroup pricing for the software starts at $35,000.