On Tuesday, VMware, Inc. announced the vSphere 4, which the company called the first operating system for building the internal cloud.

The vSphere 4 is the first operating system for building the internal cloud that helps smaller IT environments to achieve the full benefits of efficiency, resilience, and manageability demanded by large enterprises.

“VMware vSphere 4 is the next evolution along this path of innovation, said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware.

vSphere 4 offers IT departments the ability to build private cloud systems providing business services internally and for its trusted partners, supply chain participants and other business associates. vSphere 4 facilitates the delivery of IT infrastructure as a service to enterprise users.

VMware vSphere 4 helps take performance objections off the table for even the highest-end applications, allowing the virtualization benefits of higher availability, security, and automation to shine in the cloud,” said Dr. Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer of VMware.

The vSphere 4 will deliver zero-downtime application availability and enterprise-class data protection managed under a single pane of glass, providing simplified and truly affordable disaster recovery previously out of reach for most small IT organizations, according to the company.

“VMware vSphere 4 will extend these benefits to customers of all sizes, needs and budgets with proven technology that enables them to do more with less,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware.

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