Companies spend billions of dollars on software every year with the intention that these purchases will alleviate common management, monitoring and operational issues. The assumption is that, as a result, the IT infrastructures will be less complex, integrate more seamlessly, and that issues or problems will be avoided. Most of the time, software is bundled with hardware purchases. This software often becomes "shelf-ware", creating confusion about what products are necessary to use the functionality and features of the hardware - and continuing to drive a wedge between interoperability.

Managing the virtual infrastructure end-to-end is becoming more challenging ...