Robin Wauters

DataCore Software is stretching the size of its virtual disks from 2 Terabytes (TBs) to 1 Petabyte (PB).

The huge virtual disk requirement arises from two industry trends. As regards the physical storage pool, clients are eager to group multiple disk drives, each exceeding 1 TB, into Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) sets. With this release, DataCore storage virtualization nodes can control pools consisting of numerous RAID sets, each well over the previous 2 TB maximum.

Demand has also been strong from applications seeking to update and analyze very large datasets that in the foreseeable future will grow well past the 2 TB cap.

The pace of DataCore’s noteworthy innovations is indicative of its uniquely extensible software architecture. Unbridled by hardware, DataCore rapidly adapts its storage virtualization products to harness the power of bigger, faster, and cheaper equipment within weeks of the technology becoming generally available. That puts customers in the best position to take advantage of future hardware advancements.

The new software release is available immediately.

Red Hat yesterday announced financial results for its fiscal year 2010 third quarter (ended November 30, 2009).

Total revenue for the quarter was $194.3 million, an increase of 18% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $164.4 million, up 21% year-over-year.

GAAP operating income for the quarter was $19.8 million, including a previously announced charge of $8.8 million for a litigation settlement, compared to $21.0 million in the year ago quarter. After adjusting for stock compensation, amortization expenses and the charge for the litigation settlement as detailed in the tables below, non-GAAP operating income for the quarter was $46.1 million, up 20% year-over-year. GAAP operating margin was 10.2%. Non-GAAP operating margin was 23.7%, up 50 basis points from the year ago quarter.

GAAP net income for the quarter was $16.4 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, compared with $24.3 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, in the year ago quarter. The current quarter GAAP net income was reduced by $0.03 per diluted share due to the charge for the litigation settlement. Non-GAAP adjusted net income for the quarter was $33.5 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, after adjusting for stock compensation, amortization expenses and the charge for the litigation settlement as detailed in the tables below, as compared to $36.9 million, or $0.18 per diluted share, in the year ago quarter.

Operating cash flow totaled $54.1 million, compared to $59.1 million from the year ago quarter. Due to record billings, accounts receivable increased $24 million compared to last year even as days sales outstanding (DSO) improved to 54 days compared to 59 days last year. At November 30, the company’s total deferred revenue balance was $618.7 million, an increase of 23% on a year-over-year basis. Total cash, cash equivalents and investments as of November 30, 2009 were $959.1 million after repurchasing $52.3 million, or 1.9 million shares, of common stock.

Waltham-based Viewfinity, which came out of stealth mode with its first product earlier this year, has reported a $8.6 million Series B round that includes a new investor, Longworth Venture Partners.

Viewfinity, founded in 2007 by former XOsoft executives, reported the new funding in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s technology, also called Viewfinity, is a management toolthat works with virtualization software layers, called hypervisors, provisioning persistent desktops and providing single-image management of applications through an agent that enables system administrators to do rules-based provisioning without letting desktop images proliferate, according to the company.

The SEC filing indicated that the total offering is $9.1 million, including a portion outside the U.S., and that Viewfinity is selling $6 million in Series B preferred shares and lists $3.1 million in loans converted to Series B preferred shares.

Expand Networks today announces increased market penetration and global customer growth, as deployment of Expand technology reached record numbers. Expand now has over 50, 000 units deployed across a customer base of over 4,500 enterprises and corporate customers, continuing its drive into the global WAN Optimization market in 2009.

Expand is seeing heightened interest amongst its customer base for the deployment of its Virtual Accelerator (VACC) at the datacenter. The ability to seamlessly integrate a virtualized WAN Optimization solution within this environment, coupled with the ability to achieve visibility and control of virtualized applications gives Expand a unique differentiator in the market and a strong value proposition. Furthermore, as cloud-based services become more prevalent, whether private or public, the provision of an end-to-end software solution for virtualized WAN Optimization from the data center, to the branch office and mobile users is an extremely compelling offering.

In support of its continued R&D activity, Expand surveyed a focus group of senior global IT decision makers to sense market sentiment for advanced WAN Optimization. 75% of those questioned had deployed, or planned to deploy some form of virtualization in the next 12 months. Key findings include:

• 67% cited WAN Optimization technology as an enabler to a successful virtualization project and high-performing virtualization environments.
• 85% considered it important to deploy a Virtual WAN Optimization solution within a virtualized environment.
• 76% would consider adopting a WAN Optimization-as-a-Service strategy if offered at a compelling price point, with 44% citing ongoing cost efficiency and reduction in OPEX as a key driver for this.
• 59.3% are considering cloud computing to host data and applications.

The OpenNebula team announced that they have reached a stable state for the new 1.4 series of the OpenNebula Toolkit.

Downloads are available as source code as previous version but they also have created binary packages for RedHat/CentOS, Ubuntu, openSUSE and Fedora.

Highlights of OpenNebula 1.4 are:

• EC2 Query API interface for building OpenNebula-based clouds
• OCCI interface for building OpenNebula-based clouds
• Support for the VMware Hypervisor family
• Multiple user support and access-right control for Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks
• Advance contextualization support to integrate VM packs and implement multi-component services
• Easy integration with your data-center services and procedures with a new hook system
• Support block devices as VM images.
• Support for LVM storage
• Many bug fixes, and scalability and performance improvements in several components of the OpenNebula system
• A whole new set of documentation pages, guides and examples

Teradici has released PCoIP Firmware 3.0, which enables the interoperability of PCoIP hardware zero clients with VMware View 4.

PCoIP hardware zero clients add a unique client option that provides customers the flexibility they need to deploy end-to-end solutions with a variety of end point options to meet a broad range of user and business needs. Key benefits include very low operational cost, high security, and future-proof desktop scalability for IT organizations in healthcare, education, government and other market sectors.

VMware View 4 is the industry’s only purpose-built desktop virtualization solution. It establishes a new quality, cost and scale standard while eliminating critical barriers that have traditionally restricted customer adoption. VMware’s integration of Teradici’s software implementation of the PCoIP protocol is a key feature of VMware View 4, delivering a rich, high-quality desktop experience to any user regardless of location, addressing more use cases than ever before.

Desktop clients based on the Teradici TERA1100 PCoIP processor are a true zero client solution that can support any user type from task workers to mainstream office workers, to the most demanding extreme workstation/visualization application users. Hardware zero clients are different from traditional thin clients in that they use highly integrated silicon devices that are optimized for virtual desktops using the PCoIP protocol. As such, they enable the most efficient client design with no x86 processor, no north/south-bridge, no graphics processor, and no separate network controller device. PCoIP hardware zero clients can be connected to VMware View 4 virtual desktops over standard IP networks including local area networks or long distance wide area networks.

Key benefits of hardware zero clients include:

• Future-proof desktop scalability
  • Supports any graphics or media codecs (now or future) at up to full display rates
  • Flexible host configurations including dedicated remote workstations or virtual desktops for optimum desktop performance
• Lowest client operational cost
  • Eliminate patches due to no application O/S and no drivers on the client
  • High reliability with low power and no moving parts
• Highly secure
  • Unique USB device authorization
  • No local storage
  • No need for anti-virus/spyware on client