Fast on the heels of a management restructuring, virtualization specialist VMware (NYSE: VMW) is busting out some experienced industry hands for Accelerate Advisory Services, comprised of former chief information officers (CIOs), chief technology officers 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.

With Accelerate, VMware recognizes the increasing role IT organizations play in the overall effectiveness of business outcomes. The consulting service looks at areas such as meaningful measurement, market perspective and actionable strategy to develop game plans to help push IT and business transformation, according to the company. Accelerate also provides context and helps define how and why IT is critical in defining this type of business transformation.

Accelerate is being launched in tandem with the company’s acquisition of “certain assets of” InfoTech Health Check, a provider of online benchmarking tools to measure the effectiveness of IT infrastructure platforms.

More companies are waking up to the fact that IT drives business and vice versa, and CIOs and other IT leaders must focus equally on business issues and technology. According to VMware, Accelerate aims to connect the dots to “guide IT toward truly affecting business value across an entire organization” — not to mention moving it more toward VMware’s virtualization abilities.

Offering a service to provide businesses with the tools to see why they should virtualize makes sense to us, but at first blush it seems as though Accelerate’s services may step on the toes of VARs and system integrators offering consulting services of the same ilk. Watch this space for updates.