Mt. Pleasant, SC – May 11, 2011 – eGroup, Inc. today announced it has completed the enablement requirements for the VMware Cloud Computing Partner Lighthouse Initiative for VMware-qualified members of the VMware Partner Network. The Cloud Computing Partner Lighthouse program provides enablement and delivery materials to partners for vCloud Consulting Services including processes, service definition, management practices and models. VMware will continue to invest in eGroup, helping to ensure they can offer and deliver a growing range of cloud professional services.<!--more-->

Based on VMware’s extensive experience working with both enterprises and service providers to deploy VMware vCloud® environments, the vCloud Accelerator Service is part of VMware’s growing portfolio of vCloud Consulting Services to accelerate the journey to the cloud by helping customers cut through the cloud hype, define a strategy, identify starting points, and develop a pragmatic roadmap for IT transformation.

“Enterprise cloud initiatives endeavor to deliver unprecedented levels of IT agility and innovation,” said Matthew Stepanski, vice president, VMware Technical Services Cloud Practice. “VMware has made significant investments to help our customers build and deploy enterprise clouds while addressing the broad range of considerations involved in transitioning to the cloud, including technology architecture and implementation, operational processes, service definition, management practices, financial models and compliance.”

The new VMware vCloud reference architecture is a blueprint to help customers rapidly construct a working VMware vCloud solution leveraging technologies, best-practices and tools that have been proven in real-world enterprise cloud deployments. Based on VMware’s open architecture approach, the vCloud reference architecture provides the foundation for both enterprise and service provider clouds with thorough explanation of architectural elements, component details and examples of working VMware vCloud deployments. The VMware vCloud reference architecture significantly reduces the time required to research, plan and deploy a cloud-based environment.

VMware’s cloud infrastructure and management vision is an evolutionary model of IT infrastructure based on virtualization that unifies private and public cloud resources with consistent security, compliance, management and quality of service. Building on the VMware vSphere™ foundation, the cloud infrastructure products and services VMware announced in August 2010 at VMworld – VMware vCloud Director, the VMware vShield product family and VMware vCloud Datacenter Services – introduce a hybrid cloud model that seamlessly bridges private and public clouds.

About eGroup

Providing customers across the southeast with a distinct competitive advantage since 1999, eGroup is a visionary technology solutions and services firm with the ability to execute swiftly in a rapidly changing information technology landscape.  eGroup's solutions drive customers’ cost containment, revenue growth, and service objectives by addressing challenges associated with mobility, access to critical applications and data, and security.  eGroup’s expertise and core competency is focused in three distinct areas: Cloud Services (public and private), Application Services, and End-User Computing.  To deliver these solutions, eGroup has strategic partnerships with industry leaders that include VMware, Cisco, and EMC, along with Citrix, Microsoft, and Trend Micro, and a highly-skilled workforce trained in all of the latest developments in information technology.  To learn more, visit <a href="http://www.eGroup-us.com">www.eGroup-us.com</a>.

About VMware

VMware delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform – VMware vSphere® – customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2010 revenues of $2.9 billion, more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization, which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at <a href="http://www.vmware.com">www.vmware.com</a>.

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