Robin Wauters

What’s All This Talk About VMware Buying Red Hat?

August 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters 3 Comments

We were looking at the swirling rumors coming in about a potential acquisition of Red Hat by VMware, and ultimately decided not to cover the rumor because … well because it seems so irrational.

But is that actually so?

This is what BusinessWeek wrote:

Speculation is rife that the company (Red Hat) is a takeover target. “It makes no sense that they’re still hanging out there,” says Eric Gebaide, a managing director at investment bank Innovation Advisors.

One possible suitor is virtualization software company VMware, which some industry executives says is on the lookout for an operating system to add to its portfolio. Former VMware CEO Diane Greene, ousted by her board in July, had set up meetings with Red Hat in part to position VMware as friendly to open source and possibly as a prelude to a buyout discussion, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Representatives of both companies declined to comment.

Ostatic followed up with a snapshot analysis, and now the folks over at Cnet News.com are trying to make sense of such an acquisition.

Ostatic concludes in its post:

A combination of VMware virtualization and a proven, popular operating system could pave the way for a future of healthy competition for VMware with other operating systems that bundle virtualization. I wouldn’t be surprised to see both VMware and Red Hat pursue all of this.

Meanwhile Cnet’s Matt Asay contradicts:

I would think this trend cuts the other way. Red Hat (and Novell) likely see virtualization’s commoditization as a reason to push the knife deeper into VMware. Being acquired by an important but commoditized feature of their operating systems doesn’t sound appealing to me…

What do you think?

VMware

Red Hat

Unified Network Storage Provider agàmi Folds After Burning Through $45 Million In 6 Months

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

This isn’t the prettiest of stories: Valleywag and the Mercury News are reporting that unified network storage startup agàmi Systems has left the building. The company is shutting down after raising a lot of money, most recently picking up $45 million in Series C financing.

Back then, the fundraising was led by Advanced Equities (recent reports about this particular VC firm itself have been far from positive either) with participation from current investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Kleiner Perkins, APEX Venture Partners, Alta Partners, TIF Ventures and Duff Ackerman Goodrich, and new investments from ITOCHU Corporation and David Stiles (CEO), and was going to be used to ramp up sales & marketing.

Too little, too late, apparently.

More than two weeks after the shutdown, agàmi’s Web site was still up and touting the company as “the leading provider of unified network storage solutions.”

The official word:

“Agami’s board has decided to shut the company down as the efforts to raise further capital didn’t materialize in time. It’s really unfortunate, but that is true,” said Sreekanti. “The company is going through a process of the liquidation of assets, so I don’t have anymore details than that.”

And the reaction from NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven:

“You don’t raise $45 million and then get shut down. That doesn’t make sense.”

Agàmi employed between 80 and 100 people, with most in Sunnyvale, some in Hyderabad, India. Questions remain whether Agami had burned through its funds or whether some of agàmi’s investors, pulled back money that was contingent on technology or sales progress.

agami Systems

PHD Technologies Appoints Sridhar Murthy As CEO

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

PHD Technologies, provider of the esXPRESS backup and restoration solution for virtualized infrastructures, today announced the appointment of Sridhar Murthy as the company’s chief executive officer.

For the past two years, Murthy served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer at TicketsNow.com. During his tenure, the company doubled its revenues. Prior to this, Murthy was chief financial officer and vice president of operations at Collabnet, a provider of hosted enterprise solutions for distributed and outsourced software development. Earlier in his career, Murthy held finance and operations leadership positions at Get2Chip, Ariba Inc. and Remedy Corporation.

PHD Technologies recently received a significant equity investment from a top tier venture firm to help fund new product development and geographic expansion. In Q1 2008, esXPRESS surpassed the 1000th customer milestone.

AppSense Teams Up With Enterprise Systems

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

AppSense today announced that it is partnering with Enterprise Systems to extend its VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) offerings to customers throughout the U.S. Southwest, particularly those in the healthcare market.

AppSense (previous coverage) is the longstanding policy and personalization management leader in the healthcare market, with customers such as Utah Heartland Health, Wellpoint, Banner Health and Catholic Health Initiatives, among others.

While both AppSense and Enterprise Systems share a strong relationship with Citrix, Rob Piwowarczyk, founder and president of Enterprise Systems, says he wanted to establish a partnership that leverages AppSense’s user environment management expertise for VDI and other delivery mechanisms, as well as its extensive experience with healthcare IT organizations.

AppSense recently reported a 50 percent increase in U.S. revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008 and is aggressively focusing on the U.S. market. AppSense software facilitates enterprise-scale adoption of VDI by enabling organizations to significantly reduce VDI implementation costs and easily personalize standardized virtual desktops. By decoupling both corporate policy and personalization data from the desktop, managing them independently and applying them on-demand, AppSense’s solution lets IT departments use a combination of desktop and application delivery methods, and transparently migrate users from physical to virtual desktops.

Avnet to Distribute Reflex Security’s “Virtual Security Manager”

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Reflex Security today announced a global distribution agreement with Avnet Technology Solutions, an operating group of Avnet, which will be implemented initially in the U.S. and Canada. Under the agreement, Avnet will distribute Reflex Security’s “Virtual Security Manager” (VSM) solution. The agreement will significantly broaden the market opportunities for Reflex Security, and VARs will benefit from Avnet’s virtualization solutions practice.

While virtualization enables enterprise organizations to optimize IT resources and reduce their costs, there are also critical security implications that need to be taken into account. The first company to introduce a dedicated virtual security solution in the market, Reflex Security provides companies with a simple and cost-effective way to apply an additional layer of security to their virtualized environments.

vmSight Includes VDI User Activity Control In vmSight 3.5

August 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

vmSight today announced that its recently released vmSight 3.5 product suite now includes a user activity control feature for virtual desktops, in addition to its existing monitoring capabilities. This newly added capability allows virtual desktop administrators to block unauthorized user and application activity on virtual desktops for improved performance or security. The feature is available immediately in the vmSight virtual appliance that directly integrates into an organization’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platform.

vmSight’s patented Connector ID technology facilitates the new activity control functionality in release 3.5. Similar to the caller ID capability prevalent in today’s phone networks, vmSight’s Connector ID enables virtual desktops and thin clients with a user identification and tracking capability. Using this technology, vmSight is the only solution of its kind with the ability to monitor users and prevent unauthorized application activity for performance or security purposes. Administrators can identify the specific virtual desktop and applications accessed by a user at any given time, and can track, control and optimize user activity and performance end-to-end.

As part of the company’s vmSight 3.5 product suite for virtual desktop deployments, user activity control integrates completely with the vmSight Center and Monitoring Stations. User activity is monitored in real-time, and unauthorized user or application activity can be blocked for improved performance or security. Integration with Active Directory and LDAP allows policy definition based on existing user groups. Combined with its other features, such as performance monitoring and service level management, vmSight 3.5 provides a complete virtual desktop management solution to help reduce problems and support costs.