VMware starts a new beta program the 21st of January, the product is called Stage Manager. Stage Manager seems to be some sort of Lab Manager spin off. But it goes way beyond what Lab Manager can do.

• You can easily boot shadow production servers
• Create test environments for infrastructure changes
• Build complex pre-production environments
• Systematically propagate complex system changes through development, testing, staging and user acceptance phases before committing systems into production
• Get a better grip on your change, configuration and release (CCR) management processes

If you’re interested than contact your VMware partner and maybe you’ll be the one winning that “VMWorld 2008” pass! I will try to get my hands on the product and see if I can find the time to test it.