Robin Wauters

Juniper Networks Debuts Junosphere Lab, Connector

October 3, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Juniper Networks today announced the availability of Junosphere Lab, a new virtual environment that lets service providers and enterprises design, test and operate networks.

Junosphere is a cloud offering that allows network operators to create and run networks on-demand, enabling network modeling, testing and planning at a scale that is practically impossible to achieve with physical equipment.

Using Junosphere Lab, companies can “rent” networks for as little as $50 per day, enabling them to speed modeling projects by over 30 percent and lower total cost of ownership by as much as 90 percent when compared to the alternative of building a physical lab.

Junosphere Lab extends the capabilities of the Junosphere environment first announced with Junosphere Classroom in May 2011. Today, Juniper also introduced Junosphere Connector, an optional application that enables users to connect their Junosphere networks to physical networks or lab environments.

Junosphere is an all-Juniper data center network design, built with Juniper Networks products, and optimized to meet the secure networking demands of a cloud-based environment.

Junosphere Lab is immediately available. Prricing starts at $5 dollars per virtual machine image, per day.

Ed Hubbard Joins Virtual Bridges (From Citrix) As VP

October 3, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Virtual Bridges has announced that it has named Edward Hubbard vice president of products and alliances.

In his new role, Hubbard, who most recently served as senior director of business development at Citrix Systems, will drive the company’s long-term product and partnership strategy, working closely with clients to understand their business plans and deliver solutions that meet their needs.

Hubbard spent time with Dell, Microsoft and Intel before founding United Devices and serving as the company’s CEO. After a successful merger with Univa UD, Hubbard joined Citrix, managing the company’s virtualization business development efforts including strategic relationships with Microsoft and other ecosystem partners.

Hubbard will guide the roadmap for VERDE, the industry’s first VDI Gen2 offering. VERDE core capabilities include online, offline and branch VDI, a Gold Master provisioning model, a Distributed Connection brokering architecture, flexibility to run both Windows and Linux desktops, branch-level VDI at LAN speeds, the ability to span both on-premises and hosted deployment modes and desktop portability on a USB stick.

Release: Citrix XenServer 6

October 3, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Citrix Systems has announced the availability of XenServer 6, the most recent edition of its server virtualization product line.

As a key component of the Citrix cloud computing and virtualization strategy, XenServer 6 brings new optimizations and improved scalability and performance for cloud infrastructure, desktop virtualization and networking.

Rather than attempting to force-fit cloud capabilities into existing server virtualization architectures, XenServer addresses these challenges by delivering a cloud-optimized virtual platform that helps cloud providers produce differentiated solutions that meet the needs of their customers.

In addition, by leveraging XenServer 6 with the recently-released Citrix CloudStack, users can be assured the core component of their cloud infrastructure has the network and virtualization optimizations necessary for the same scale-out architectures employed by the world’s largest and most successful cloud providers today.

VMware Announces New iPad, Android Apps From SlideRocket And Socialcast

September 27, 2011 by Robin Wauters 3 Comments

Advancing its vision for the future of applications in the post-PC era, VMware today announced new iPad and updated Android applications from SlideRocket and Socialcast that will help modern businesses empower a more agile, productive and connected enterprise.

SlideRocket and Socialcast’s mobile applications address a need to equip the connected enterprise with user-centric communication and collaboration tools that enhance business outcomes.

SlideRocket transforms presentations to better fit the needs of today’s enterprise with enhanced graphic capabilities, analytics and viewing patterns, real-time feedback, social media integration, and mobile functionality that drive deeper levels of engagement, audience participation and retention.

With the new, free SlideRocket Player iPad app, users can share engaging presentations, whether presenting to an audience across the table or across the globe. People can also invite someone to view a presentation from a simple link.

Available in the coming weeks, the new Socialcast iPad and updated Android app enables people to access their Socialcast community while on the road. Employees will be able to collaborate with co-workers from anywhere: posting updates, sharing files and connecting on important work projects.

In addition, Socialcast will support secure login via OAuth 2.0.

Release: Nimbula Director 1.5

September 26, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Nimbula, the ‘Cloud Operating System Company’, today announced the immediate availability of Nimbula Director 1.5, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for managing compute and storage resources.

The software helps enterprises and service providers build powerful private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Nimbula Director 1.5 supports a geographically distributed cloud. The software can manage this multi-site cloud from a single view. This dramatically improves the cloud experience for end users because they now have a single login from which they can access any resource worldwide and deploy their workloads to any site in a self-service manner.

Today, Nimbula announced partnerships with Atalanta Systems, Electric Cloud and Standing Cloud in order to provide the optimal platform for developers to build and deploy applications.

Nimbula also announced partnerships with Gluster and Scality to expand Nimbula Director’s support for persistent storage solutions with storage leaders.

Nimbula Director 1.5 pricing and packaging remain unchanged.

For deployments on infrastructure up to and including 40 cores, Nimbula Director is licensed free of charge. A paid support option is available for users of the free version. For deployments on infrastructure with more than 40 cores, Nimbula Director is licensed on an annual subscription basis and includes both maintenance and support services.

Former Cisco CTO Alan Conley Joins Zenoss

September 26, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Zenoss has announced the appointment of Alan Conley as chief technology officer.

Conley joins Zenoss from Cisco, where for many years he led their IT operations architecture and was most recently CTO of the Network Management Technology Group where he was responsible for Cisco’s cloud and virtualization management offerings.

Conley has extensive experience in the cloud management industry. He was a key driver of Cisco’s strategy and architecture for cloud management, next generation network API, OpenStack, DMTF OVF 2.0, and Open Network Foundation (ONF).

Conley also brings to Zenoss more than 14 years’ experience in IT at Cisco as a distinguished engineer responsible for IT operations and management technology.