Robin Wauters

Secerno Introduces Database Security Solution for Virtual Environments

July 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Database security provider Secerno today announced the availability of its Secerno.SQL database activity monitoring and blocking solution as a virtualized appliance on the VMware platform. This, according to the company, marks the first availability of its appliance-based database protection in a virtualized environment, allowing enterprises the same database protection afforded by hardware yet with the utilisation, management and cost benefits of a virtualized application.

Secerno’s virtualized database protection product is powered by its patent-pending SynoptiQ technology. The company chose VMware’s technology platform based on its penetration into more than 20,000 corporate customers.

“This unique announcement comes at an exciting time for Secerno. We have just secured funding that allows us to respond to market opportunities and customer demand,” said Steve Hurn, CEO of Secerno. “In this case, we are bringing Secerno to a virtualised environment to offer organisations more variety in their deployments and reduce their overall costs in terms of resources and expenses. Virtualisation is emerging as a key strategy for companies, and we are delighted to be the first to offer this option for database activity monitoring and blocking.”

Secerno.SQL for VMware is set to be available this quarter.

Secerno

IntervalZero Acquires Ardence Embedded Software Business From Citrix Systems

July 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

IntervalZero, a new embedded software company led by a group of senior Ardence executives, today announced that it has acquired Ardence’s Embedded software business from Citrix.

The company, which is based in Waltham, MA, is headed by CEO Jeffrey D. Hibbard, an Ardence/Citrix executive with more than 20 years of software engineering, sales, marketing and management experience.

IntervalZero officially completed the acquisition on July 15 and will continue to market and sell the Embedded products under their existing names – RTX, ETS and Select. IntervalZero said worldwide Embedded Distribution/Reseller channels and Embedded Partner affiliations – notably the Partner relationships with Microsoft and Intel – remain in place.

Citrix, the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, acquired Ardence’s Enterprise and Embedded software businesses in January 2007. Although Citrix determined that the Ardence Embedded products were not a good fit for its Enterprise product portfolio, Citrix made an equity investment in IntervalZero.

“We believe there are significant opportunities in Embedded technology, but it is not a core business for Citrix. To continue to grow and succeed, the Embedded business needed both the focus and the investment that Jeff and the IntervalZero team are fully committed to delivering. Their approach to the market and their business model are sound, which is why we have maintained a stake in the IntervalZero,” said Lou Shipley, VP and General Manager of Citrix’s Xen Products Group.

Xsigo Partners With Carahsoft to Bring I/O Virtualization to Government Agencies

July 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider, today announced that it has expanded its VMware Complementary Solutions team to include Xsigo Systems, which specializes in I/O virtualization.

Xsigo Systems is the latest vendor to be added to Carahsoft’s VMware Complementary Solutions Team, which provides public-sector buyers with one-stop shopping for related technologies that address agencies’ virtualization needs across servers, desktops, applications, networks, and storage.

“As VMware’s master government aggregator, Carahsoft offers proven expertise in virtualization technologies and in marketing and selling to the public sector marketplace,” said Jon Toor, vice president of marketing at Xsigo. “We look forward to working with the Carahsoft team to bring our innovative I/O technology to bear on the challenges facing IT managers interested in deploying VMware software faster, on more servers, and across more applications.”

3PAR Introduces New Incentive Program V-TIP

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

3PAR announced today its Virtual Technology Incentive Program (V-TIP) which is designed to combine the benefits of 3PAR Utility Storage with financial incentives offered by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for datacenter storage virtualization and thin provisioning projects.

The financial incentives offered to 3PAR customers by PG&E reward 3PAR customers for deploying “energy-smart storage”. PG&E rebates are based on the amount of energy savings achieved by datacenters through storage virtualization and the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning and other thin technologies from 3PAR. To qualify for these financial incentives, Northern and Central California PG&E customers must apply for and be accepted into the rebate program prior to deploying a new 3PAR-based storage implementation.

Financial incentives from PG&E are just a part of the energy and environmental benefits from 3PAR Utility Storage. According to a Wikibon Energy Lab case study, customers replacing older storage technologies with next-generation 3PAR InServ arrays have saved as much as 90%* on annual energy costs related to powering and cooling their storage systems.

[Source: MarketWatch]

VMware Planning Massive New Data Center In Washington

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

According to Data Center Knowledge, VMware is planning to locate a new data center in East Wenatchee (North Central Washington), leasing no less than 100,000 square feet of space in a new facility being built by Sabey Corporation on its Intergate.Columbia campus. VMware will be the biggest leaser by far; their data center will take up about two-thirds of the 189,000 square foot second building.

Company spokeswoman Melinda Marks said that VMware will use its new data center to expand research and development.

Quest Software Releases Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite 5.10

July 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Patrick Rouse, Sales Engineer at Quest Software, wrote up a blog post to announce that their Provision Networks division has shipped the new version of the company’s cross-platform VDI connection broker, Virtual Access Suite (VAS) 5.10. The 5.9 version was released to the public in December of 2007, and had one service pack, so all the following features are new to version 5.10:

Web Portal – Web-IT:

Web-IT migrated to ASP.Net 1.1 to ASP.Net 2.0
Web-IT config files migrated from text to XML files to support future automation
Web-IT Integration With Juniper Secure Access
Smart Card login support

Clients:

Ticketing – Secure tickets will be issued per connection request, obviating the need to embed hashed user credentials inside .pit connection files
Enhanced Multi-monitor support
Updated Linux and Java Clients
PXE Boot Linux Client
LiveCD Linux Client
All AppPortal Client settings can be stored in a single configuration file
Java Client fully supported via Secure Gateway

Connection Broker & Management Console:

Support for Microsoft Hyper-V
Support for Virtual Iron 4.3.x
Dynamic Computer Group Auto-expansion – Auto Provisioning of new computers
Server Provisioning
Delete computers that have not been used in a specified number of days
Realtime enumeration of running processes on Managed Computers
Termination of running processes on Managed Computers.
Power Management of ACPI and WoL (Wake on LAN) capable computers and servers
MSI Package Deployment to Computer Groups or Managed Computers and servers
Disable/Enable Computer Groups or Managed Computers during maintenance cycles
Unique Computer names enforced across Desktop Groups and Data Centers
Display Realtime License Usage
Retrieval and display of VM Template Sizes
Wizard Driven Managed Desktop creation
Streamlined Softgrid Integration
Option to bypass proxy settings for Console to Broker communication
Verification of sufficient disk space on target storage when provisioning servers or desktops.

Task Automation for Power Management (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Power Off
Power On
Reset
Resume – for VMware and Hyper-V
Standby – for ACPI & WoL Devices
Suspend -for VMware and Hyper-V
Wakeup – for ACPI & WoL Devices

Task Automation for Operating System operations (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Log off user
Reset Session
Restart O/S
Shutdown O/S

Task Automation for Virtual machines (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Delete VM
Delete VM not accessed in a specified number of days

Task Automation for Miscellaneous Tasks (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Copy file to computer
Enable/Disable Computer
Initialize Computer
Run Program/Script on Computer

Task Automation for MSI Packages (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

Install MSI Package
Update MSI Package
Uninstall MSI Package

Setup Program:

Wizard-based setup program to automate database creation, upgrade, and management of VMware trust store and Virtual Iron jar libraries
Terminal Servers and Connection Brokers are automatically added to the Provision Farm in the Provision Management Console.

Experience Optimization Pack:

Bi-directional Audio – Microphone Redirection
Local Text Echo – Latency Masking for typing over latent networks
Multi-media Redirection – seamlessly redirects multi-media content to the client CODEC for local playback. – This will be released as a separate 5.10 update, as it has not been released from QA yet.