Robin Wauters

OK Labs Launches Mobile Virtualization Integration Practice (VIP)

June 25, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) today announced that the company has launched the industry’s first mobile Virtualization Integration Practice (VIP). The VIP offers a set of consulting and training services that help customers to define requirements, validate design approaches, and support mobile phone product development.

Leading the practice offerings is a collaborative Discovery Service that helps OK Labs OKL4 users integrate virtualization into mobile handset hardware and software architecture. Other VIP Services include Training, Porting, Quick Start, Installation, and Engineering consulting. OK VIP Services help handset OEMs, mobile network operators (MNOs), and semiconductor suppliers to realize significant value from deploying mobile phone virtualization, and to propagate that value across the mobile ecosystem.

OK VIP Discovery service takes into account not only the architecture of mobile hardware and software, but also customer-defined business goals and objectives, and ecosystem relationships. The service delivery is informed by the OK Labs tech team’s understanding of silicon suppliers’ current capabilities and product roadmaps; the evolution of mobile operating systems and other mobile device software; the requirements and service rollout plans of MNOs; and the channels used to deliver handsets, applications, and content.

The VIP Discovery Service starts with detailed requirements gathering, accomplished through an on-site engagement with handset OEM, MNO, or semiconductor supplier technology and business teams. Together with the customer, OK Labs evaluates mobile project design, development, testing, and deployment processes, from both technical and commercial perspectives. Ultimately, OK Labs VIP Discovery Service includes delivery of actionable recommendations for implementation of mobile phone virtualization architecture, integration, training and support.

The VIP Discovery service confers a range of benefits to OEMs and their ecosystem:

• Aligning mobile phone virtualization with business goals and objectives
• Building and refining mobile design strategies to maximize ROI from mobile phone virtualization
• Aligning mobile device features with capabilities and requirements of ecosystem partners and the mobile marketplace

In a study conducted by OK Labs regarding mobile access to enterprise applications, something made possible by mobile phone virtualization, it was found that mobile phone users and corporate IT managers expect that mobile access to enterprise applications growth will outpace the growth of mobile email over the next two years. For OEMs, MNOs and semiconductor suppliers that leverage this opportunity, VIP services enable a quick and efficient path to meet this demand.

OK VIP services are available immediately from OK Labs

Siemens Enters Virtualization Arena

June 24, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Siemens IT Solutions and Services today introduced its full-scale Virtualization Services. Based upon three core tenets — Engage, Enable, and Evolve — the package of services is designed to guide customers through what Siemens calls the “Virtualization Evolution”.

The three tenets of the Siemens approach are designed to guide customers through the various stages of the Virtualization Evolution. At the outset, Siemens engages virtualization to simplify technology tools and business processes. By simplifying the IT and process environment, companies can reduce the number of non-value-added tasks and improve business efficiency. This simplified architecture must be housed and enabled in some fashion, and containment is the means.

Containment engages all of the IT components into a centrally managed environment. By using the VMware vSphere 4 platform with Intel Xeo processor-based servers for containment, companies will be able to save power, reduce emissions, and consolidate server space. After simplifying and containing system architecture, the next step is evolving to the optimum state of fully dynamic infrastructure. Emerging client virtualization solutions incorporating Intel vPro technology provide enhanced security and improved manageability with increased end user flexibility. The entire Virtual Evolution is a journey along the road from initial simplification to the fully dynamic use of IT infrastructure.

Siemens IT Solutions and Services is one of the few companies that has demonstrated full scale virtualization of IT services, having implemented it on a global scale for its parent company, Siemens AG. “No one else is doing it on this scale in real time,” said Michael Kollar, Chief Architect. “We’ve implemented virtualization from data centers to the desktop. As such, we have a deep understanding of both the IT and business ramifications. Virtualization is about both content and technology,” he said.

For its Virtualization Services, Siemens has drawn upon its considerable experience in IT transformation to create a process that produces predictable and repeatable results. The five components can be utilized in sequence, individually, or in almost any combination.

Siemens contends that its Virtualization Services will provide customers with considerable financial and operational benefits, including:

Infrastructure cost reduction and optimization by managing more workloads without adding additional resources, and reducing power and cooling requirements
Server consolidation and infrastructure optimization created by pooling compute resources for improved utilization
Improved operational flexibility and responsiveness through managed IT infrastructure, based on standardized services, processes and automation

Siemens’ Virtualization Services are powered by Intel architecture based server and client platforms. The software is powered by VMware vSphere 4. Siemens feels strongly that the relationship between these three partners affords them an innovation advantage in the virtualization market, especially as it applies to cloud computing. Overall, this virtualized infrastructure provides important strategic, economic, and operational benefits, including:

Non-stop hardware maintenance
Dynamic resource management
Instantaneous backups and reliable disaster recovery

RNA Networks Debuts RNAcache For Its Memory Virtualization Platform

June 24, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

RNA networks today announced it has extended its Memory Virtualization Platform (MVP) product family with the release of RNAcache. MVP transforms server memory into a shared network resource. RNAcache allows servers to leverage RNA’s unlimited pool of memory by loading entire working datasets into a single shared, virtual memory pool for simultaneous access and processing. RNAcache significantly lowers the cost of supporting business critical, memory-intensive applications without making further investments in costly data center equipment, enabling companies to wring as much revenue potential out of existing servers as possible.

Broadly applicable to a variety of industries, RNAcache provides line speed processing of the most memory intensive and I/O bound applications including predictive analytics and modeling, high volume Internet applications and clustered environments without requiring changes to applications, OS or storage.

An investment management firm using RNAcache said, “With RNAcache, our analytic models that previously took 1.5 hours ran in a matter of minutes – showing a 2,000 percentage performance improvement.” In this case, RNA’s unlimited memory pool held a working dataset of 3 Terabytes across hundreds of compute nodes.

RNAcache works in all network environments including GbE, 10GbE, and InfiniBand. RNAcache removes data center bottlenecks caused by contention for application memory, the most scarce and limited resource in the data center. During customer testing, RNAcache significantly enhanced performance in the following use cases:

Predictive Analytics and Modeling: improved predictive modeling capabilities by 20X, delivering results to analysts in a fraction of the time.
High Volume, Fast Internet Applications: improved query speed 100X, increased simultaneous user capacity 5X and expanded customer revenue opportunities each business day.
Clustered Environments: A high performance cloud provider accelerated processing rates by 30X, without having to scale out their hardware, power or space footprint.

The rate of proliferation and amount of data that must be quickly analyzed, shared and interpreted is growing exponentially. RNAcache makes the benefits of memory virtualization widely available to customers in industries who rely on access, performance and scale to remain competitive – be it video streaming or algorithmic model processing.

Release: Entuity Eye of the Storm Network Professional Edition

June 24, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Entuity today announced Eye of the Storm Network Professional Edition (EYE NPE), a network management solution that defines a new category along the management price/performance continuum – enterprise functionality at a price point previously reserved for workgroup class tools struggling to scale and support SME network needs.

The newest member of Entuity’s software family delivers technology for the mid-market on three fronts: automation, accuracy, and deep functionality for management to cost-effectively keep dynamic and contemporary networks optimally performing.

EYE NPE delivers optimal network performance by going beyond the “red light/green light” signaling that qualifies the typical low-priced network management tools. EYE NPE provides an intelligent view of object connectivity, root cause analysis, and a broad range of configurable thresholds allowing users to pinpoint where problems occur and quickly take action.

Unlike the device-centric approach of other commercially available solutions, EYE NPE includes user configurable views which represent any logical collection of devices or segmentation of the network. Views represent a higher abstraction of the network – a business unit, a building, a particular floor, a department, or the devices assigned to particular operations personnel – then EYE NPE collects and reports operational metrics matching specified business processes. Built in reports with a versatile scheduler in a range of business-ready formats are also available to automate reporting and distribution.

Built from Entuity’s enterprise class event engine and database that support 85,000 managed objects per server, EYE NPE supports up to 7,500 managed objects on a single server and combines proven features of the best network management tools on the market. The product is priced at $22,500.

EYE NPE will be available June 26, and runs on Microsoft Windows Server operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and VMWare ESX Server.

Release: 5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner

June 22, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

5nine Software today announced the release of 5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner, and 5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner Free Edition – the first virtualization migration planning solutions specifically designed for enterprise P2V Hyper-V deployment projects.

5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner offers the following features:

Automated P2V Hyper-V Migration Planning – Performs sophisticated analysis of the current data center and provides multiple migration plans depending on particular enterprise requirements. Optimized placement of virtualized workloads is based on business requirements, technology (memory, storage and CPU utilization, security) and TCO/ROI.
Agentless Data Collection – Automatically discovers and collects hardware inventory, utilization data and application performance metrics in a non-intrusive manner without installing agents. It also allows importing this information from an Excel or XML file.
Simple-to-Use – The product was designed to be used for projects of all sizes – from small virtualization pilot or SMB projects to large enterprise projects with hundreds of servers, hosts and virtual machines (VMs).
Integrated TCO/ROI Reporting – P2V Planner creates a variety of technology assessment, workload and TCO/ROI reports for each migration plan, for easy comparison and decision making.
Ongoing Value – Whether your P2V Hyper-V migration project is complete or ongoing, the Planner continues to provide value by optimizing the workloads and resource utilization in a virtualized data center.

The current version of the product supports Microsoft Hyper-V, while subsequent releases will support multiple virtualization platforms, including VMware P2V planning, as well as actual P2V conversion in accordance with the P2V migration plans created.

5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner Free Edition is available immediately, and it’s free for any Microsoft Hyper-V environment. P2V Hyper-V Planner is also available immediately, with North American pricing starting at $59.00 USD per physical server.

VMLogix Announces Beta Release Of LabManager Cloud Edition

June 22, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMLogix today announced the beta release of VMLogix LabManager – Cloud Edition, a new product that enables software teams to run virtual labs within cloud computing environments. The only offering on the market to support on-premise and public clouds, VMLogix LabManager now enables users to leverage the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to deliver and maintain software applications more quickly, cost-effectively and reliably.

Software teams will be able to improve software quality and time to market using VMLogix LabManager – Cloud Edition for a dynamic, scalable and elastic virtual lab experience. The new edition offers an easy and cost-effective way to provide virtual lab automation to development, QA, training, pre-sales demo and support teams. Features include:

Creation and management of multi-machine configurations: enabling the combination of multiple Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) into a single environment and providing capabilities to entirely automate the deployment and re-deployment of multi-machine environments (including software stack customizations) in a self-service fashion;
Full virtual lab tool capabilities: tapping into powerful virtual lab management capabilities including user/team management, license management and lease management, and enabling users/teams to share/collaborate with lab artefacts, audit trails and access to a centralized repository of software media;
On-demand access to virtual lab resources: allowing for immediate access to computing infrastructure resources over the web from any location; and,
Pay-for-what-you-use pricing model: leveraging the elasticity of the cloud allows customers to reduce up front capital expenditures by instantly scaling up or scaling down the lab infrastructure when required, and only paying for what is used.

VMLogix LabManager – Cloud Edition beta is available now, and will be generally available in September. Pricing for the beta is free and requires an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.