Robin Wauters

Reflex Security Rebrands To Reflex Systems

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Reflex Security today announced it has changed its company name to Reflex Systems. The new moniker was given “to more appropriately convey the award-winning comprehensive virtual infrastructure management offering that the company is now known for in addition to the virtual security appliance solution that Reflex pioneered”.

Reflex Virtualization Management Center (VMC) dramatically increases the visibility, management and security of an organization’s virtual infrastructure. Purpose-built on a strong security foundation, VMC provides the essential tools needed to bridge the gap between management and security in virtualized data centers. Reflex VMC provides infrastructure discovery and visualization, revision control, application/services discovery, network security, performance, lifecycle management and policy enforcement.

AppSense Releases Management Suite Version 8.0

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

AppSense, provider of user environment management solutions for the enterprise, announced today the immediate availability of AppSense Management Suite Version 8.0.

This release includes the recently announced Environment Manager 8.0, as well as upgrades to Application Manager and Performance Manager. It represents a significant step forward in delivering a complete solution to managing all aspects of the user experience regardless of desktop and application delivery mechanism. AppSense technology enables corporate policy and personalization data, known as the ‘user personality’ to be abstracted from the desktop and managed independently.

This personality can then be dynamically applied ‘on-demand’ to any user environment. Whether applications and desktops are delivered locally, published, streamed or virtualized – or combinations thereof – user environment management ensures that all user settings are correctly applied and persisted across desktop sessions.

AppSense Management Suite Version 8.0 consists of three products (Environment Manager, Application Manager and Performance Manager) that provide policy and personalization management, application entitlement and resource control to create a predictable, compliant and responsive environment for users. Enterprise scalability and intuitive management controls provide a high degree of automation for IT, enabling cost savings through optimal use of resources as well as high levels of service quality.

Sun Microsystems Updates Solaris, ZFS

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Sun Microsystems has introduced a new version of its Solaris operating system offering enhancements to virtualization support and the company’s ZFS file system. The open source version of the platform has also been demonstrated on IBM mainframes for the first time.

Available now on Sun systems and as a download, Solaris 10 10/08 includes numerous enhancements over the core Solaris 10 code. These include tighter integration of Sun’s large-scale ZFS file system, enabling systems to boot from the software and operate it as the sole file system. ZFS also now offers increased data integrity and integrated disaster recovery capabilities.

Sun has also worked with Intel to ensure that the new Solaris release is optimised for the latest Xeon processor chips as well as Sun’s own Sparc architecture.

Sun and IBM have also demonstrated OpenSolaris, the open source version of Solaris, running on an IBM System Z mainframe. The move follows a joint announcement in August that IBM was expanding support for Solaris.

Seanodes Releases Exanodes VM Edition 1.0 for VMware

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Seanodes, the creator and developer of Shared Internal Storage solutions, today unveiled a new Virtual Machine Edition of its Exanodes software for VMware environments. Exanodes VM Edition 1.0 for VMware is ideal for small to midsized businesses that are transitioning to network storage, and hosted storage services such as cloud computing that need to maximize capacity, reliability and performance at a lower cost than traditional network storage.

Installation, configuration and deployment of Exanodes VM Edition requires no target management, no additional hardware, no need for external SAN storage or fabrics and no specific storage competencies. It provides high performance through improved parallelism and full utilization of hardware at the user’s disposal. Exanodes VM Edition also delivers catastrophic fault tolerance with self-healing capabilities, and takes less then 40 minutes to rebuild a 1TB disk.

Deploying an Exanodes-based storage back end allows companies running VMware for server virtualization to derive the same cost, flexibility, simplicity and other benefits in a fully virtualized computing infrastructure. Like the flagship edition of Seanodes’ Exanodes software, Exanodes VM Edition creates a virtualized storage pool that recovers server-attached storage assets and makes them available as part of a shared, scalable, and resilient storage network and enables companies to maximize the ROI of their current storage technology.

Exanodes VM Edition was recently named a winner of a Best Products and Services Award by Network Products Guide, a world-leading publication on technology solutions. Exanodes VM Edition was praised as an alternative to investment in traditional SANs that are as much as 20 times more expensive, or continually purchasing additional storage capacity.

Exanodes VM Edition is available through solution providers in Seanodes’ network of channel partners.

mindSHIFT Debuts Virtualization-As-A-Service Solution

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

mindSHIFT Technologies, a provider of premier IT infrastructure and software services for small and medium-sized organizations, today announced its virtualization-as-a service solution, which provides deployment, management and support for virtualized server architectures as well as a comprehensive data replication capability for disaster recovery (DR).

mindSHIFT’s Server Virtualization Service is unique among virtualization offerings because it combines all the hardware, software and management costs of servers and DR into one single, predictable monthly fee. In contrast, other virtualization services require capital expenditures for the DR solution — either a software license or the more expensive establishment of a secondary redundant site. mindSHIFT’s virtualization-as-a-service provides not only virtual server management but the added bonus of DR — all bundled into a single, predictable monthly fee.

For DR, the mindSHIFT Server Virtualization Service incorporates CA XOsoft(TM) Replication to create a cost-effective, comprehensive and transparent data replication solution that replicates the data on primary production servers to one or more servers located in mindSHIFT’s data center. This automatic, secure data replication is one of the solutions in mindSHIFT’s comprehensive suite of disaster recovery solutions, which includes online backup of desktops and servers as well as redundant network components and connectivity.

With mindSHIFT’s virtualization-as-a-service, customers have the option of an on-premise solution built to address their specific business requirements designed by mindSHIFT’s VMware- and Microsoft-certified engineers, or a solution built in our fully hosted environment in a top-tier data center, which eliminates the upfront costs of software and hardware.

mindSHIFT’s Server Virtualization Service based on VMware is available immediately. A Microsoft Hyper-V-based service is expected to be announced next year.

mindSHIFT is certified as a VMware Enterprise Partner, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, BlackBerry Alliance Member, Cisco Premier Certified Partner, Dell Certified Partner, HP Business Partner and IBM Business Partner.

NetQoS Expands Partnerships Globally

November 4, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

NetQoS has expanded its global reseller and system integrator network with new partnerships in Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. Combined with a dedicated NetQoS international sales team, the partnerships will help NetQoS build and support its growing global client base with products and services that enable large organizations to optimize their networks for application performance.

In Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, NetQoS is working with MICROmega Technologies (MMT), based in Johannesburg, South Africa. MMT will help NetQoS expand its regional presence through an established network of Cisco Gold Partners and the expertise to deploy and integrate the NetQoS Performance Center in customer environments.

NetQoS is also expanding its presence in Asia Pacific through a strategic partnership with NetFrontier. Working closely with NetFrontier, NetQoS will build on its success in the region by helping companies in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan improve network performance and application delivery.

In addition to new partnerships in emerging markets, NetQoS has expanded its European sales efforts recently with new partnerships in France, Sweden, and the UK. NetQoS complements its reseller network with direct sales staff in the UK, Germany, and Singapore. During the first half of 2008, NetQoS increased EMEA revenues 160 percent year-over-year.