Archives for January 2010

RingCube Technologies, a provider of managed virtual workspaces, today announced that it has joined the McAfee Security Innovation Alliance partner program.

Under the McAfee program, RingCube has integrated its vDesk workspace virtualization solution with McAfee Encrypted USB drives, enabling enterprise customers to increase the mobility of their workforce while lowering the cost of desktop management and support.

vDesk creates a virtual workspace on the McAfee Encrypted USB drive that contains the user’s desktop environment including applications, data and settings. When the user connects the USB drive to any PC, they instantly have access to their corporate desktop environment for remote access, for disaster recovery, or for temporary access by consultants, contractors and outsourcers.

vDesk works with McAfee Encrypted USB drives to ensure that vDesk virtual workspaces are isolated from host PCs, that all data is encrypted, and that only authorized users can access the encrypted workspace. vDesk provides network and file system isolation policies, granular host security policy enforcement and integration with active directory for user authorization. As part of host security scanning, vDesk can verify that McAfee VirusScan Enterprise or McAfee Total Protection Suite is updated and actively protecting the virtual workspace prior to allowing any user access. McAfee’s Encrypted USB drives ensure that RingCube’s workspaces are protected by 2-factor biometric user authentication and the strongest AES 256-bit hardware encryption to prevent data leakage and unauthorized access.

Layered Technologies, a worldwide provider of on-demand IT infrastructure, has developed a new virtual private data center (VPDC) platform with levels of managed services, security and flexibility via a proprietary API that were previously unavailable in an integrated offering.

The new platform is a hybrid cloud computing infrastructure that gives customers a virtualized environment on dedicated servers within Layered Tech data centers, as well as levels of flexibility on how to securely access their VPDC, whether by dedicated lines, VPN or Internet.

Because Layered Tech’s new VPDC offering is technology-agnostic, customers can choose the virtualization platform that best suits their needs, including 3Tera’s AppLogic, VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. Layered Tech’s automated server provisioning system will also enable enterprise customers to design, order and deploy a secure virtualized environment within an hour, instead of the weeks or months it can take to provision a similar solution within many companies’ on-premise data centers.

And, Layered Tech’s new VPDC platform provides a customer API, which makes more than 100 applications immediately available to the customer’s developers; those developers then have access to the API for customizing additional applications of their choice.

Layered Tech’s new integrated virtualized platform gives customers the reliability of dedicated servers with the high availability, processing power and scalability of virtual machines to meet constantly changing business needs. The customer API, created by Layered Tech and based on industry standard protocols (SOAP and XML-RPC), provides easy connectivity and enables customers to perform activities such as customizing proprietary applications, monitoring and managing resources, reviewing analytics, and more via computer or mobile device.

And because Layered Tech wraps its new VPDC platform with tiered managed services that are based on its DEFCON service bundles, customers can choose from a range of support options, rather than the all-or-nothing approach from other hosting providers. Support ranges from the highest root-level access down to the lowest self-managed option with varying levels in between, which lets customers focus on managing their businesses, not their VPDC.

SafeNet today announced a technology agnostic solution for software license authorization and enforcement on virtual machines (VMs).

Software vendors can now introduce licensing and pricing models that support and control the utilization of their application in virtual environments, enabling them to protect their applications from copy and duplication, ensure their competitive position, and even increase profitability.

This month SafeNet will begin rolling out technology agnostic VM binding support across its industry-leading Sentinel® product lines, providing software vendors with a viable option to authorize and control their software applications in virtualized environments.

By enabling software vendors to bind a license to a single VM, just as they would in a traditional licensing scenario, SafeNet’s technology protects the license and the application from copy and duplication. The solution’s technology agnostic design enables customers to support and control licensing in any virtual environment, including VMware, Microsoft, Xen, and other technologies, offering a truly future-proof licensing solution.

Join SafeNet and Amy Konary of IDC on February 4, 2010 at 11:00am ET as they present “Licensing for Profit in Virtual Environments,” a live webinar. The interactive webinar will review the many challenges virtualization has created for software publishers and best practices for supporting and enforcing software licensing in virtual environments. Register for the webinar now!

Visit us online at www.safenet-inc.com/virtualization. To learn more about the virtual environment licensing features of SafeNet’s industry-leading software protection and licensing solutions, Sentinel HASP and Sentinel RMS.

From InformationWeek:

Big tech companies bought hundreds of smaller players from 2000 to 2009, but to my mind only one acquisition stands out as the smartest purchase of the aughts.

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My pick is EMC/VMware, because of the sheer impact that server virtualization is having on the technology industry. And because VMware currently owns this market, it gets credit for much of this impact.

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As for EMC, the company gained a relevance and market power it would never have commanded as a plain old storage vendor. On the flip side, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and others have the knives out for EMC/VMware like never before.

Full blog post here.

Wyse Technology and Pippard have come together to create a POS system that is designed and optimized for these environments.

The Pippard MRT-WCR includes the traditional POS system display, cash drawer, receipt printer and scanner, but its heart is based on a new Wyse virtual client processor combined with a Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009 operating system.

• The Wyse component is unique in the market, offering hardware support for advanced multimedia and video, enabling easier to use and more impactful POS applications.
• It also uses solid state storage rather than a hard disk to store local operating software, significantly increasing the reliability. Windows Embedded Standard 2009 delivers peripheral connectivity and enterprise class manageability.

The system will be available in January 2010 directly from Pippard and through distribution in mid-2010. The system will be available as a thin client targeted at the specialty retail market and as a zero client with Wyse Streaming Manager targeted at the large format retailer with greater than 6 registers per store.

This approach connects directly to cloud computing, virtualization and streaming software technologies delivered by Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and Wyse today, and provides several benefits:

• Highly secure – no data is stored on the POS system, so no data is lost or exposed in the case of damage or theft of the system.
• Increased margins – through lower operating costs
  • Lower energy costs – The ENERGYSTAR certified Wyse client consumes less than 7 watts of electricity in full operation – the same amount of energy consumed as a typical holiday tree light bulb, and typically 85 percent less than PC-based products.
  • Simplifies and reduces IT costs, via central management, reducing or eliminating the need to ever visit the system to perform maintenance, upgrades, and diagnostics
• Reliable – operation continues even in the case of network failure
• POS resiliency – a solid state disk drive option provides for remotely managed, local virtualized POS transaction storage in the event of loss of communications with central server
• Flexible – seasonal traffic increases can be easily handled by simply connecting additional units to the in-store network