VMware announced the formation of VMware Accelerate Advisory Services, a group of former Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and industry consultants, dedicated to enabling senior enterprise business and IT executives to deepen their understanding of how cloud computing can deliver business value across an organization.

Leveraging VMware's thought leadership, market experience and resources, Accelerate addresses the increasing role IT organizations play in the overall effectiveness of business outcomes.

These new services, the result from years of work with hundreds of clients, provide for the first time custom methods to help accelerate IT and business transformation in areas such as:

- Meaningful measurement. Accelerate empowers CIOs and other IT leaders to determine what Key Performance Indexes (KPIs) are required to quantify, measure and analyze the organizations journey to virtualization and cloud implementation, and combines that with a body of data to help benchmark performance relative to peers and industry bests.

- Market perspective.Informed by direct learning gained from VMware technology deployments across the globe, as well as a deep ecosystem of more than 50,000 partners, Accelerate provides context and helps define how and why IT is leading the way in defining this type of business transformation.

- Actionable strategy. As analysts point to a need for CIO’s and other IT leaders to focus more on business issues rather than technical matters, Accelerate connects the critical points needed to guide IT toward truly affect business value across an entire organization.

"IT's most important mission is creating business value, and having the right IT strategy is already determining winners and losers in many industries," said Carl Eschenbach, VMware chief operating officer and co-president. "VMware Accelerate helps IT leadership measure, define and guide the transition from technology steward to business partner, so IT can most effectively help business serve customers and create competitive advantage.”

Built upon VMware’s rich virtualization benchmark data and understanding of the current and best-in-class IT transformation performance indicators, a key element of Accelerate will be providing IT executives with a strong, fact-based approach for assessing their progress toward achieving a cloud infrastructure and shaping the overall business.

In addition, today VMware announced it has acquired certain assets of Virginia-based Info Tech Health Check (iTHC), which will enhance Accelerate’s already robust benchmarking service.

Specific key benefits will include:

- The addition of 3,500 metrics, building a view that includes multiple perspectives which enable an exercise that is relevant and focused.

- The inclusion of 20 industries, providing insight into a broader set of comparisons across organizations and functional peers.

- Data covering four key geographies, giving an all-important perspective of international business operations and challenges.

The benchmarking capabilities brought together by VMware and iTHC will also align and complement VMware’s overall services strategy and partner community investments.

For example, VMware will be working with select consulting and integration partners on extending their cloud advisory service capabilities and leveraging the iTHC assets and Accelerate.

Additionally, a broader set of IT Business Management (ITBM) services and products will be offered to partners with established ITBM and IT Strategy practices.

VMware Accelerate Advisory Services are immediately available in North America, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as well as China, Australia, Japan and across Southeast Asia. These services also will be available more broadly in Europe and Asia during the second half of 2012.