Virtualization.com

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

Robin Wauters

Ericom Debuts Chromebook-Ready, Pure HTML5 Client For VMware View

by Leave a Comment

Ericom Software today announced general availability of Ericom AccessNow for VMware View, bringing an almost three-month beta to an end.

Ericom AccessNow for VMware View is a patent-pending HTML5 client that provides web-based access to VMware View virtual desktops.

It’s the first VDI solution to run wholly within any HTML5-compatible Web browser, and works on Chromebooks and natively with Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer (with Chrome Frame plug-in), Firefox, Opera and other browsers with HTML5 and WebSocket support. The solution does not require Java, Flash, Silverlight or any other underlying technology.

Ericom also recently announced AccessNow, the first product to provide access to Windows applications and desktops running on Windows Terminal Services / RDS / VDI platforms directly from Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer (with Chrome Frame plug-in), Firefox, Opera and other browsers with HTML5 and WebSocket support, without any plug-ins required.

Cotendo Raises $17 Million From Citrix, Juniper Networks And Others

by Leave a Comment

Cotendo, provider of cloud-based acceleration technologies, announced today the completion of a $17 million private funding round that will fuel the company’s “long-term growth strategy and continued technology innovation in the delivery of highly-personalized dynamic content for mobile and web applications”.

In addition, the funds will be used to continue Cotendo’s global expansion into new markets and fast growing regions around the world.

Strategic investors and new business partners Citrix Systems and Juniper Networks, through its Junos Innovation Fund, participated in this round of funding along with existing venture backers Sequoia, Benchmark and Tenaya Capital.

The synergy between the services and technologies of Citrix Systems and Cotendo blend on-premise physical and virtual appliances, content acceleration and cloud services that will accelerate and optimize delivery from the end user all the way to the enterprise over distributed networks, thereby improving end user experience from any location to any device.

The relationship between Juniper Networks and Cotendo will address the demand of service providers for technologies that will enable them to offer value added services and over-the-top services to content providers. This includes mobile carriers, large ISPs, and telecom companies that buy products to serve enterprise customers.

Cotendo will also launch and commercialize its new Mobile Acceleration Suite, and announced today the new frontier of acceleration services, ensuring fast and reliable delivery of mobile content regardless of location, device, or application.

With this funding round Cotendo will embark on a rapid sales and business development expansion in Asia-Pacific and Latin America to address the growing demand for mobile content acceleration services in places where the Smart Phone frequently replaced the PC as a primary computing and networking vehicle.

(Via TechCrunch)

Tintri Raises $18 Million For “VM-Aware” Storage Appliance VMstore

by Leave a Comment

Tintri, producer of ‘VM-aware’ storage appliances, today announced it has closed an $18 million Series C funding round led by the company’s current investors, NEA and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The funding will help Tintri accelerate its research and development schedule and invest in regional sales.

Tintri’s VMstore is a purpose-built storage appliance that is exclusively intended for virtual machines, allowing enterprises to overcome storage-centric bottlenecks and significantly broaden their virtual deployments.

Tintri was co-founded in 2008 by Dr. Kieran Harty, former head of R&D at virtualization software giant VMware, and is headquartered in Mountain View.

(Via TechCrunch)

Quantum Acquires Pancetera Software For $12 Million

by 1 Comment

Quantum, a provider of backup, recovery and archive solutions, today announced that it has acquired Pancetera Software, a privately held company that aims to reduce the complexity and cost of managing and protecting data in virtual server environments.

The $12 million transaction consisted of $8.4 million in cash and $3.6 million in Quantum common stock (approximately 1.2 million shares), and is expected to be accretive to operating profit by the end of the current fiscal year.

For Quantum, the acquisition adds key assets for enhancing data management in virtual environments. Pancetera technology is already compatible with Quantum’s DXi disk backup and deduplication products, and the company plans to further integrate the technology into its longer-term roadmaps for both DXi and its StorNext file sharing and archive offerings.

The acquisition also adds significant virtualization and storage management expertise to Quantum. Nearly all the Pancetera employees have joined the company, including co-founders Mitch Haile (CTO and VP, Product Management) and Greg Wade (VP, Engineering), as well as CEO Henrik Rosendahl.

VMware Launches vFabric 5, An Integrated Application Platform For Virtual And Cloud Environments

by Leave a Comment

VMware yesterday announced vFabric 5, an integrated application platform for virtual and cloud environments.

Combining the Spring development framework for Java and the latest generation of vFabric application services, vFabric 5 will provide the core application platform for building, deploying and running modern applications.

vFabric 5 introduces a flexible packaging and licensing model that will allow enterprises to purchase application infrastructure software based on virtual machines, rather than physical hardware CPUs, and to pay only for the licenses in use.

The model in vFabric 5 more closely aligns to cloud computing models that directly link the cost of software with use, consumption and value delivered to the organization.

vFabric 5 is engineered specifically to take advantage of the server architecture of VMware vSphere. The new Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J) capability that will be available in vFabric tc Server will allow for optimal management of memory across Java applications through the use of memory ballooning in the JVM.

Over 3 million developers use the Spring framework to build enterprise Java applications. With vFabric 5, users can gain insight into the performance of their Spring applications with the new Spring Insight Operations.

VMware vFabric 5 will be generally available in late summer 2011.

It will be offered in two versions: VMware vFabric Standard at $1,200 per VM and VMware vFabric Advanced at $1,800 per VM.

New Challenges Emerge As Virtualization Goes Mainstream, Symantec Finds

by Leave a Comment

Symantec recently announced the findings of its 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey which examined how organizations plan to move business-critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments.

The survey highlighted topics including server, client, and storage virtualization, storage-as-a-service, and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and the results uncover disparities between expectations and reality as enterprises deploy these solutions. The survey is based on more than 3,700 respondents from 35 countries worldwide.

Adoption of server virtualization is widespread, and more than 75 percent of organizations are discussing private and hybrid cloud deployments. Of the technologies evaluated in the survey, server and storage virtualization are the most mature with 45 and 43 percent of enterprises implementing. Private Storage-as-a-Service is the least mature with 36 percent adopting.

Early investments have revealed gaps between expectations and reality which indicate that organizations are still learning what these technologies are capable of and how to overcome the new challenges they bring with them.

Server virtualization projects were most successful, with only a 4 percent average gap between expected and realized goals. The biggest gaps occurred in scalability, reducing capital expenditures and reducing operating expenditures.

The average shortfall in storage virtualization was 33 percent, with disappointments coming in agility, scalability and reducing operating expenditures.

Respondents reported an average gap between expected and realized goals of 26 percent with endpoint/desktop virtualization. They cited disappointments in new endpoint deployment, application delivery and application compatibility.

Seventy-seven percent of organizations are considering private Storage-as-a-Service, but these projects are challenging to implement and fall short of expectations by 37 percent. For example, complexity reduction was a goal for 84 percent of respondents, but reached by only 44 percent.

The survey shows that organizations are leveraging virtualization for business-critical applications. Of enterprises who are implementing virtualization, more than half (59 percent) plan to virtualize database applications in the next 12 months.

Fifty-five percent plan to virtualize web applications, and 47 percent plan to virtualize email and calendar applications. Forty-one percent plan to virtualize ERP applications.

More than half of respondents (56 percent) said storage costs somewhat or significantly increased with server virtualization. Of those in the process of virtualizing storage, the top three reasons for deployment include reducing operating expenses (55 percent), improving storage performance (54 percent), and improving disaster recovery readiness (53 percent).

Seventy-six percent of enterprises who have implemented server virtualization indicated that security was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing business-critical applications on virtualized servers. Sixty-three percent listed security as a significant/extreme challenge to implementing server virtualization.