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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Robin Wauters

CA Buys Large Part Of Cassatt

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Remember our post about data center management software firm Cassatt Corproation being “close to the end” as quoted by the company’s founder and CEO Bill Coleman?

Well Computer Associates just announced the acquisition of certain data center automation and policy-based optimization expertise and assets from Cassatt, a provider of innovative cloud computing software that makes data centers more efficient. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cassatt’s Rob Gingell, executive vice president of Product Development and Chief Technology Officer, and Steve Oberlin, Chief Scientist and co-founder, have joined CA, along with their team of developers, engineers, and other key employees. In addition, CA has acquired several Cassatt patents and patent applications, as well as other intellectual property.

CA’s business-driven automation solution helps customers reduce capital and operating costs and improve service quality by enabling dynamic, real-time response to changing business demands. The solution is instrumental in increasing business agility, service quality and control, as well as helping to reduce risk and human error, lower costs, and improve IT efficiency. By this optimization of value, CA automation helps customers achieve Lean IT.

Industry Moves: VKernel Taps Kevin Conklin For VP Product Marketing Role

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VKernel Corporation today announced that Kevin Conklin has joined the company as vice president of product management and marketing. A 30–year high–tech industry veteran with proven success in the development and implementation of strategic marketing programs and communications, Conklin comes to VKernel from his most recent position as vice president of marketing at Mazu Networks.

During his tenure as vice president of marketing at Mazu Networks, Conklin was focused on repositioning the company to take advantage of its unique market differentiators. In one year, his efforts led to a 50 percent increase in quarterly revenue resulting in Mazu’s acquisition by Riverbed Technology. Previously, Conklin was the chief marketing officer for SMARTS where he led an effort to refocus marketing messaging and expand channel and partner programs. SMARTS was acquired by EMC.

He was also the executive vice president of marketing and business development for Concord Communications which was widely recognized as the market share leader in a field of over 20 network management vendors. Concord was acquired by CA.

Release: Raxco’s Virtual Aware PerfectDisk 10 Exchange

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Raxco Software today announced the addition of its patent-pending Virtual Aware defragmentation technology to PerfectDisk 10 Exchange. PerfectDisk 10 Exchange ensures optimal performance in virtual Exchange environments. Licensing also includes a license of PerfectDisk 10 Server Virtual Edition, providing Exchange server systems with a disk defrag solution.

PerfectDisk 10 Exchange utilizes new patent-pending technology that is virtually aware of its environment. Typical disk defragmenters available in the market today are unable to distinguish that they are in a virtual environment, resulting in scenarios where a virtual guest will consume resources from the host that are critical to another guest’s potentially critical activity. This resource contention can easily lead to a severe degradation in performance for the critical guest. With PerfectDisk 10 Exchange, PerfectDisk is able to determine when it is in a virtual Exchange environment and adjust defragmentation accordingly to eliminate performance-debilitating resource contention. PerfectDisk 10 Exchange is the world’s only disk defragmenter to automatically defragment and compact Exchange data stores.

PerfectDisk 10 Exchange with exclusive Virtual Aware defragmentation is available immediately for free evaluation

FastScale Introduces Stack Manager Workgroup Edition

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FastScale today announced the introduction of FastScale Stack Manager Workgroup Edition, a new product that enables enterprise IT and engineering teams to easily create, optimize and manage logical servers for deployment in physical, virtual or cloud environments. Logical servers enable a ‘build once, deploy anywhere’ methodology to support complex, dynamic and hybrid server infrastructure and allow a consistent approach to creating and managing physical and virtual machines throughout server lifecycles. FastScale Stack Manager provides a central platform with a one-button solution for administrators who need dynamic yet optimized server builds.

FastScale Stack Manager incorporates patent-pending Application Blueprinting technology to automatically generate logical servers with ‘just enough operating system’ (JeOS) and deliver lightweight server builds that are up to 95% smaller, inherently more secure, with dramatically reduced memory, processor and disk usage. In addition, new visualization and stack optimization tools enable users to quickly and easily analyze servers with a full operating system profile and then optimize by package group, file type or directory hierarchy with dynamic size calculations that support the assessment.

The result can be compared to the FastScale Application Blueprint as an insurance policy against creating a server build with missing file dependencies – omitted files are easily added with a mouse click. Rich web based settings management allows policy-based standardization as well as fine-grained customization of logical server configurations.

In addition to the most automated, iterative and robust set of capabilities available to build and optimize logical servers for Windows, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based application environments, an enterprise-class software repository enables lifecycle management of logical server specifications, software assets, roles, permissions, history, and metadata for complete tracking, traceability and reproducibility. When a server deployment is needed, FastScale Stack Manager will create the appropriate output format on-demand from components stored in the repository, according to the logical server specification.

FastScale Stack Manager Workgroup Edition is available now, and pricing starts at $25,000 for five users.

Industry Moves: IT Veteran Don Bules Appointed CEO At Unidesk

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Virtual desktop management software maker Unidesk today announced that Don Bulens has joined the company as President and CEO.

Bulens is known for building and scaling IT infrastructure companies, as demonstrated most recently at EqualLogic, where he led the company to success in the networked data storage market and its $1.4 billion acquisition by Dell, and, earlier, at Lotus, where his channel development leadership was instrumental in the success of Lotus Notes. Bulens’ expertise in guiding companies and bringing transformational products to the global market is ideally suited for Unidesk as it begins to build its leadership position in the desktop virtualization and PC life cycle management software categories.

Bulens fortifies an executive team that has an impressive track record of delivering innovative IT infrastructure management solutions. His appointment enables Unidesk Founder Chris Midgley, who had been the company’s acting CEO, to focus full-time on his CTO role leading the company’s technical strategy and product vision. Bulens has also joined Midgley on Unidesk’s Board of Directors.

Bulens was most recently President and CEO of EqualLogic, provider of networked data storage systems that simplify how IT organizations store and protect information. Under his leadership, EqualLogic achieved stellar growth, doubling revenue each year and achieving the second largest market share in the fastest growing segment of the storage industry. In November 2007, while in the final stages of filing for an IPO, EqualLogic was acquired by Dell.

Bulens arrived at EqualLogic with extensive experience in early-stage and industry-leading companies. He was CEO of Trellix, a leading provider of web site publishing tools, through its sale to Interland, the largest provider of web hosting for small businesses. Earlier, at Lotus, Bulens led the creation of the channel and developer community that contributed to the extraordinary market growth of Lotus Notes.

Netuitive Brings Predictive Analytics to HP Business Service Management Console

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Netuitive, a provider of self-learning performance management software, today announced it has integrated its predictive analytics capabilities with HP Business Service Management (BSM) technology for an automated and adaptive BSM solution. Netuitive is now a Gold Enterprise Management Application Partner of HP’s and has been invited to join the HP Software Marketplace Referral Program.

Netuitive helps customers increase the value of their existing BSM tools. Business users benefit from increased service availability and avoidance of revenue loss and end-user productivity loss, while IT is better equipped to identify and act upon problems before affecting the end user. Both business and IT users benefit with a unified BSM toolset that enables successful BSM implementations and provides a better understanding of how IT operations and infrastructure performance affect business services.

At a more granular level, the combination of Netuitive’s automated performance management technology and HP’s leading BSM technology addresses common IT operational issues. These include too many fragmented domain tools; the inability to prioritize issues based on business impact; and, slow, inefficient problem identification and resolution processes.