Archives for January 2010

CORAID Announces $10 Million Series A Funding, New Executives

January 25, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

CORAID, a developer of scale-out storage with more than 1,100 customers worldwide, today announced that it has closed a $10 million Series-A financing round with Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners to accelerate the development and adoption of the CORAID EtherDrive storage platform.

With this funding, the company has named multiple Silicon Valley veterans to its executive team, including: Kevin Brown as CEO, Audrey MacLean as chairman of the board, Carl Wright as executive vice president of worldwide sales, and Josh Leslie as vice president of channels and business development. Lara Druyan of Allegis Capital and Paul Weinstein of Azure Capital Partners have joined CORAID’s board of directors; Mark Leslie and Charles Giancarlo have joined the advisory board and invested in the company.

CORAID is redefining the fundamental economics of storage with its Ethernet-based solutions that provide enterprises of all sizes with a flexible tier of high performance, scale-out storage. CORAID’s breakthrough EtherDrive storage platform has organically amassed over 1,100 customers, including large enterprise and government organizations, since its 2005 launch into the Linux market.

Using innovative software with 100-percent commodity hardware and raw Ethernet, EtherDrive storage arrays enable a scale-out SAN architecture that is ideally suited to dynamic virtualization and cloud environments. Starting at under $500 per terabyte and scaling to multiple petabytes, EtherDrive delivers a 5-8x price performance advantage over legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI solutions, while eliminating layers of complex SAN management.

This announcement coincides with the completion of the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) deployment of CORAID’s EtherDrive solution in its storage network to support high-performance computing for the National Human Genome Research project. Located in Rockville, Maryland, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is leading a nationwide effort to coordinate and accelerate human genome research. NHGRI has deployed more than 400 terabytes of CORAID EtherDrive storage in multiple environments, including high-performance computing, primary storage, and backup. The EtherDrive installation supports applications including DNA sequencing, bio-informatics, and data reduction.

Veeam Appoints VMware’s Daniel Fried To Managing Director for EMEA

January 25, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today announced the promotion of Daniel Fried to managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Fried joined Veeam from VMware, where he was Director, Partner Sales, Southern EMEA.

“Daniel has spent the past 20 years creating and nurturing international high-tech companies, such as VMware, Alcatel and Philips,” explained George Sidoris, Veeam Software Vice President of Worldwide Sales. “His promotion follows on the heels of his excellent work and Veeam’s extraordinary growth in Europe. Despite the economic crisis, Veeam grew by 130 percent in Europe between 2008 and 2009.”Fried began his career with Veeam Software in 2008 when he launched the company’s French subsidiary in Paris and assumed leadership of the Southern EMEA region. In 2009 he expanded his responsibilities to build and supervise the Central Europe region for Veeam.

In little more than a year, Fried and his team have created a network of more than 1,000 partners in Europe, enabling Veeam to make a substantial impact on the small and medium business market and win a significant number of large enterprise accounts.

Cavalier Acquires NET Telcos

January 25, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Cavalier, a provider of telecommunications services throughout the eastern United States, has acquired the assets of NET Telcos, a Richmond, Virginia-based provider of colocation and managed services.

NET Telcos’ SAS 70-certified data center provides more than 4,000 square feet of colocation space and managed services which include server virtualization, data backups, firewalls and e-mail hosting.

The NET Telcos acquisition provides a solid platform for Cavalier to expand colocation and managed services offerings to its current customer base in the Mid-Atlantic region. Cavalier’s current customers will have the ability to access the managed services provided in the data center using a variety of cost-effective access solutions which provide the required bandwidth for server colocation, remote backup, disaster recovery and server replication.

For existing NET Telcos customers, Cavalier’s extensive voice, data, IP and fiber network infrastructure will provide enhanced connectivity and service options throughout the region. With the ability to leverage a single carrier network, customers will be able to consolidate their services and budgets and allow Cavalier to manage more of their IT network.

Avaya Selects Xsigo Systems for Virtual I/O Scalability and Performance

January 19, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Xsigo Systems today announced that Avaya, a global enterprise communications systems provider, has deployed Xsigo virtual I/O as part of a recent virtualization deployment that supports the company’s software development teams.

Virtual I/O was seen as critical to meet the project’s server utilization and continuous uptime objectives that would help to accelerate the company’s engineering efforts while reducing costs. Compared with alternative solutions, Xsigo virtual I/O allowed the company to run twice as many virtual machines per server while delivering continuous uptime.

Avaya is a leader in voice and data communications services, with over 16,000 employees and 2,300 research and development professionals worldwide. The company’s communications applications, software, and services helps enterprise customers simplify complex communications systems and integrate technologies from other vendors. This virtualization project consolidated and streamlined the management of servers used to design and test applications software.

The company deployed multiple Xsigo VP780 I/O Directors to provide connectivity for their virtualized server environment that also includes Dell PowerEdge 1950 and R610 servers, VMware ESX software, and Fibre Channel-attached storage.

Benefits achieved with the Xsigo I/O Director include:

· Scalability: Up to 64 connections per server (1GE, 10GE, and Fibre Channel)
· Performance: Up to 80Gbps bandwidth to each server
· Flexibility: Dynamic connectivity management without server reboots
· Simplicity: 70% fewer cards, cables, and switch ports

Release: Wyse TCX Suite 4.0

January 19, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Wyse Technology, a provider of thin computing and client virtualization solutions, announced the availability of Wyse TCX Suite 4.0.

Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 unifies all existing Wyse TCX solutions in a single product suite, as well as adds new features.

Each underlying software component in the suite delivers an enhancement component designed to work seamlessly within Microsoft Terminal Services, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View environments. Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 includes comprehensive platform support including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2. Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 is compatible with XenDesktop 4 and VMware View 4.

Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 features Collaborative Processing Architecture (CPA) which divides the workload between the server and client whenever appropriate, reducing the need for larger servers, and delivering the best client virtualization computing experience available.

The Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 comprises of multimedia acceleration which is a technology that streamlines the delivery of the multimedia stream to the local client for a rich playback experience within a thin computing architecture. It also offers flash acceleration which is a technology that extend the capabilities of the remoting protocols for delivering Flash video content using Windows Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Internet Explorer 8, without the need for a Flash player on the local client.

The Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 also comprises of multi-display system which makes virtual desktops and applications multi-monitor aware over RDP and ICA connections, and the client USB (universal serial bus) port virtualization which makes client attached USB devices visible to virtual desktops and applications. It also offers rich sound which enables and facilitates the deployment of virtual desktops and applications that require receiving and transmitting audio without compromise.

The Wyse TCX Suite 4.0 also offers Avaya SoftPhone and Elluminate applications support, high fidelity audio over high latency links, redirect USB devices in shared mode to terminal server/XenApp based desktops, Windows Taskbar on primary monitor, WMV multicast support without URL or infrastructure modification, and enhancing core media redirection with H.264/MP4 part 10 and MS MP4 part 2 v3 (DivX 3.1) support.

Wyse TCX 4.0 is available immediately at $35/device seat.

Pano Logic Announces New Reseller Program

January 19, 2010 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Pano Logic today announced its new comprehensive partner program intended to accelerate partner growth and profitability, and expand the EMEA channel.

The program to reward existing and new resellers of the PanoSystem, an all-in-one zero client desktop virtualization platform, with generous margin incentives while reinforcing their continued commitment with comprehensive training, support, sales and marketing tools, and access to marketing funds to drive pipeline creation.

The Pano Logic technology is the only VDI system to radically centralize all computing power to the virtualized server, so there is absolutely no processing power at the endpoint. Analyst houses Gartner and Forrester are both forecasting increased uptake of desktop virtualization in 2010, with analyst Roy Illsley of OVUM predicting an increase from one per cent to five per cent of businesses using desktop virtualization by the end of the year (Roy Illsley, 2010: The Tipping Point of Desktop Virtualisation; 2009).

This presents a significant opportunity for resellers to increase profitability within their existing install base and add new customers. Existing partners are already taking advantage of the trend.

UK-based STL Technologies, who joined the Pano Partner Program in October of 2009 experienced the traction and is now promoted to EMEA Premier Partner status, the first Pano Logic EMEA Premier Partner.