Virtualization.com

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

Robin Wauters

SAP, Microsoft Team Up To Make App Development And Cloud Management Easier

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Expanding their long-term partnership with a joint base of thousands of customers, SAP and Microsoft today announced their plans to improve integration between SAP software and Microsoft virtualization and cloud computing technologies.

These plans include innovations to people-centric applications development for SAP software as well as virtualization and cloud computing without disruption of customer IT landscapes.

The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 15-18, 2011.

The parties plan to make business processes from SAP software more easily consumed and extended by .NET developers, simplifying the overall application development process. This level of access will help redefine the SAP/Microsoft developer landscape with shorter development cycles, lower costs and openness into core applications.

Microsoft and SAP are also planning to provide integration between upcoming landscape management software from SAP, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V technology, bringing greater agility for cloud management and deployments.

NEC Corporation Signs Global OEM Agreement With Wyse

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Wyse today announced the signing of a worldwide multiyear OEM agreement with NEC Corporation, a provider of IT and network technologies. The agreement involves NEC’s VirtualPCCenter (VPCC), an end-to-end desktop cloud platform from NEC designed to bring stability to enterprise IT systems.

As part of the agreement, NEC will be offering its customers two advanced NEC-branded Wyse thin clients with Wyse’s WDM cloud client infrastructure management software, which were developed for and in collaboration with NEC.

The two thin client products are US300c and US110c.

Both solutions feature a separate graphic accelerator for satisfying performance and user experience and a low-power media system processor that delivers rich multimedia and video playback of up to HD resolution.

Model US300c offers support for Windows Embedded Standard (WES), the next generation of Windows Embedded offerings from Microsoft. It also includes the latest RDP, ICA and VMware View client support, enhanced security features, advanced multimedia technology support with a Microsoft Silverlight plug-in component that enables the next generation of media experiences, rich interactive applications for the Web on devices that run WES, and local execution of Silverlight and Windows Media Player 11.

Model US110c offers support for Windows CE, features fast start-up powered by a VIA ULV 1GHz processor, and boots in seconds. This model also provides secure user login to corporate networks.

NEC’s VirtualPCCenter operates in the same way as a traditional desktop PC, enabling the user to access typical desktop PC applications. Benefits to the user and IT include, improved back up and security of data, enforced endpoint security, and simplified software maintenance.

Novell Presents New Executive Leadership Team, Returns to Utah

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Novell, a business unit of The Attachmate Group, today announced a new executive leadership team with a mission to rededicate and refocus on the end-user computing solutions used by many of Novell’s long-standing and loyal customers and partners.

Under the leadership of Bob Flynn, president and general manager of Novell, the Novell management team will continue innovating next-generation products while also nurturing the mature and widely adopted Novell solutions.

Central to the unit’s go-forward strategy to help customers maximize their investments is extending support for the NetWare product as customers upgrade to Open Enterprise Server and continuing investments in Novell GroupWise and Novell ZENworks endpoint management solutions.

The new Novell business unit will have a clear focus on the widely adopted core Novell solutions in the collaboration and endpoint management markets. This renewed focus will allow Novell to dedicate resources to meet existing and new customer requirements, where the company’s heritage and expertise is strongest.

Headquartered in Provo, Utah, the Novell leadership team comprises:

Bob Flynn – President and General Manager
Dave Wilkes – Vice President, Engineering
Eric Varness – Vice President, Product Management and Marketing
Juan Carlos Cerrutti – Vice President, North America Sales
Dirk W. Schmidt – Vice President, EMEA Sales
John Delk – Vice President, Strategic Accounts, Partners & Alliances – North America

NetIQ Adds Novell Solutions, Announces New Executive Leadership Team

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Enterprise software company NetIQ, a business unit of The Attachmate Group, today announced it will add the complete portfolio of Novell identity and security solutions and selected Novell data center solutions to the NetIQ business unit solution portfolio.

The combination of these technologies into one business unit further deepens the NetIQ focus on identity, security and compliance management, IT operations management, virtualization and cloud computing.

Under the leadership of Jay Gardner, president and general manager of NetIQ, the management team will spearhead the company’s objectives of reducing IT cost, complexity and risk for its customers.

With headquarters in Houston, Texas, the new NetIQ management team comprises a seasoned set of leaders from both the heritage NetIQ and Novell business units, taking on the following roles:

Jay Gardner, President and General Manager
Ron Hardy, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing
Somesh Singh, Vice President of Engineering
Ron Milton, Vice President of Customer Value Realization
Bill Koehl, Vice President Sales — North America
Ton Musters, Vice President of Sales — EMEA
John Delk, Vice President, Client Executives — North America, Global Alliances and Americas Partner Organization

Desktone To Leverage Platform Equinix For Cloud-Hosted Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

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Equinix, a provider of data center services, today announced that Desktone, which markets Cloud-hosted Desktops-as-a-Service, will leverage Platform Equinix to launch the next generation of its cloud-hosted virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Desktone selected Equinix for its proximity to existing customers and target markets, flexible global infrastructure, and ability to scale to support rapid growth in end-user utilization and adoption.

Desktone will initially deploy in North America, and has plans to expand globally across Platform Equinix.

Cloud-hosted VDI requires unique infrastructure to support end-user performance requirements and lower service delivery costs. When latency targets aren’t met, end-user applications are significantly impacted and compromise the customer experience.

As such, proximity of the VDI cloud deployment to the end-user communities is one of the crucial requirements when choosing a data center provider. Desktone says it is committed to delivering sub-20 millisecond latency for all of the markets it serves to ensure a differentiating, high-quality customer experience.

HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat And Others Form Open Virtualization Alliance

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BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE yesterday announced the formation of the Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium committed to fostering the adoption of open virtualization technologies including Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

The consortium will promote examples of customer successes, encourage interoperability and accelerate the expansion of the ecosystem of third party solutions around KVM, providing businesses improved choice, performance and price for virtualization.

The Open Virtualization Alliance will also provide education, best practices and technical advice to help businesses understand and evaluate their virtualization options.

The consortium complements the existing open source communities managing the development of the KVM hypervisor and associated management capabilities, which are driving technology innovations for customers virtualizing both Linux and Windows applications.

Members of the Open Virtualization Alliance have a common interest in supporting open virtualization, and are involved in the development, distribution, support, use, or other business interest in KVM or offerings which use it. By providing an open virtualization alternative, they are offering their clients choice and enabling them to select the ideal virtualization products for their business needs.