Robin Wauters

Jonathan Schwartz Boasts About Sun xVM

January 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, wrote a blog post based on the recent Sun quarter financial announcements. From the post:

“Topping the list was the interest in Sun xVM. xVM is our free, open source virtualization platform, which we unveiled at Oracle Open World, alongside our management platform, xVM Ops Center. xVM will virtualize Windows, Linux or Solaris, on either Dell, HP, IBM or Sun hardware. We’ve seen broad interest from across the world, especially from customers that want to avoid putting a proprietary virtualization technology at the base of large scale open source datacenters (“why go back?” one said to me). Interest in our virtualization story (from xVM to Solaris containers) expands to every industry, and nearly every customer – it’s just about the number one item on the agenda.”

Not sure about you, but reading xVM out loud (ex-VM, get it?) always makes me smile 🙂

StackSafe Unveils Test Center at DEMO 08

January 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

I’m currently watching the live stream from DEMO 08 , listening to a pitch from StackSafe which is really compelling. The company was foreseeing enough to publish a press release in conjunction with the product launch.

“StackSafe, Inc., a provider of pre-production staging and testing solutions for IT operations teams, announced today the immediate availability of StackSafe™ Test Center . Test Center is the first virtualized staging and testing solution for IT Operations teams that improves availability and resiliency through enhanced software infrastructure testing. StackSafe’s solution directly addresses incomplete and ineffective IT Operations testing and analysis of changes to multi-tiered software infrastructure stacks.

“If IT Operations teams can test and certify changes to software infrastructures before they go live, then IT services become more available and resilient as well as more repeatable and better documented,” said Donna Scott, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Comprehensive and efficient staging, testing and analysis are essential to achieving optimum levels of availability.””

Watch the Flash demo here .

These are the key benefits according to StackSafe:

* Reduces the uncertainty and downtime associated with IT changes, thus avoiding costly application and system failure
* Enables pre-production changes to be made safely before they are implemented into the live environment
* Helps IT Operations teams to understand the potential impacts that changes could have on their environment-before they impact production systems
* Enables IT Operations to be more responsive to dynamic and changing business process requirements
* Improves confidence in IT changes, while reducing the percentage of time spent on testing and staging-which can significantly lower IT operating costs

Another Desktop Virtualization Player Enters The Market: Meet Propalms

January 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Propalms haso announced that it will be entering the desktop virtualization market in 2008 with the launch of its Virtual Desktop Manager technology within its new TSE product. Analyst firm IDC predicts the market for desktop virtualization software will be near $2 billion by 2011, with major players such as Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and SWsoft involved.

“We are pleased to be entering the desktop virtualization market in 2008 and excited about the opportunities this will open up for Propalms TSE by adding this technology. We believe our history of delivering tried and tested application delivery solutions to the server-based computing market gives us a key edge in this space and will allow us to be at the forefront of this market as its growth accelerates over the next year,” stated Owen Dukes, CEO of Propalms.

Propalms recently announced that the Company invoiced $992,383 in sales transactions through the 11 month period ending December 31st, 2007 and project over $1,000,000 for the Fiscal Year ending this month. These sales signify the Company’s accelerated growth, as they have added new customers and expanded the distribution of Propalms TSE. The sales transactions also include increased license renewals and maintenance contracts.

[Via Virtualization Journal ]

Infinera Launches Bandwidth Virtualization

January 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Infinera Corporation has launched Bandwidth Virtualization to “meet the needs of the Internet for a faster, more responsive Internet today and in the future. Implemented using an Infinera Digital Optical Network, Bandwidth Virtualization enables service providers to respond quickly and flexibly to market demand with a wide range of services over one optical infrastructure. Bandwidth Virtualization also enables service providers to differentiate themselves by offering innovative new services to their customers.”

From the press release:

“As more consumers spend more time viewing video on the Internet, the demand for higher quality images, comparable to those on traditional televisions, will rise. The major broadcast networks have already begun this trend by insisting on higher-quality images as they make their shows available online. To illustrate this phenomenon and the challenges it poses to technologists and network operators, Infinera commissioned a video, “Bandwidth Virtualization, An Architecture for Today’s Internet,” shot entirely in high-definition or HDTV format. Hosted by Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh, and featuring appearances by Randy Nicklas of XO Communications and Lane Patterson of Equinix, the video explains the technology behind Bandwidth Virtualization and its application in some of the world’s most advanced networks.”

This is the video they’re referring to:

Another Virtualization Company Raises Funding; This Time Pano Logic Is Getting $ 12 Million

January 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

After Virtual Iron and CiRBA , it’s now Pano Logic announcing fresh funding to the tune of $ 12 million. This is the desktop virtualization company’s second round, which was led by New York-based Goldman Sachs.

Other participants included Foundation Capital, which has an office in Menlo Park (where Pano Logic is based).

The company said it uses existing server virtualization technologies to create a new approach to client/desktop computing that lowers total cost of ownership while increasing security, management and mobility.

Founded in 2006, Pano Logic also has an office in Toronto, Canada.

[Via BusinessJournal ]

Cisco Introduces Nexus 7000 Series: Virtual Switches for Future Data Centers?

January 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Cisco Systems this week starts pitching a new series of switches, called Nexus 7000 , as the first component of its Data Center 3.0 architecture and as the successor to the Catalyst 6500, the most successful product in Cisco’s history. Like the Catalyst 6500, the Nexus is a chassis intended for the enterprise data center, into which customers stack blades for additional interfaces. But whereas the Catalyst 6500 is a jack-of-all-trades that can be a firewall, a load balancer, or a router depending on the blades plugged into it, the Nexus is aimed at just one job: virtualization.

The company claims it can:

* copy all the searchable Web in less than eight minutes;
* download Wikipedia’s database in 10 milliseconds;
* download 90,000 Netflix movies in less than 40 seconds;
* run 5 million concurrent high-quality videoconferences between New York and San Francisco;
* or send a two-megapixel digital photograph of CEO John Chambers to every human being on earth in 28 minutes.

InformationWeek puts it this way:

“Cisco’s vision is one in which big companies off-load an increasing number of server tasks to network switches, with servers ultimately becoming little more than virtual machines inside a switch. The Nexus doesn’t deliver that, but it makes a start, aiming to virtualize the network interface cards, host bus adapters, and cables that connect servers to networks and remote storage. At present, those require dedicated local area networks and storage area networks, with each using a separate network interface card and host bus adapter for every virtual server. The Nexus aims to consolidate them all into one (or two, for redundancy), with virtual servers connecting through virtual NICs.”

Meanwhile, All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski jokingly claims the switch is ‘fast enough to create rift in space-time continuum ‘.