Virtualization.com

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

Featured

Release: VMware Fusion 4

by Leave a Comment

VMware today announced VMware Fusion 4, the “best way to run Windows on a Mac”.

Available now for a promotional price of $49.99, VMware Fusion 4 makes it easy for users to run Windows applications on a Mac.

Fusion 4 has more than 90 new features and is optimized for today’s multi-core Macs and OS X Lion.

VMware Fusion 4 now supports OS X Lion in a virtual machine, allowing users to get more from their Mac by running OS X Lion, OS X Lion Server, Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server and Mac OS X Leopard Server in virtual machines.

The suggested retail price for VMware Fusion 4 is $79.99. Customers who have purchased VMware Fusion 3 on or after July 20, 2011 are eligible for an electronic upgrade to VMware Fusion 4 at no additional cost.

VMware Fusion box products will be available at key resellers including Apple, Apple.com, Amazon.com, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics and many other stores in the coming days. VMware Fusion is available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

VMware Announces Availability Of VMware vSphere 5

by Leave a Comment

VMware today announced the general availability of VMware vSphere 5, delivering nearly 200 new and enhanced capabilities to help customers transform IT by driving greater efficiency from existing investments and improving operational agility.

The foundation of VMware’s cloud infrastructure suite, VMware vSphere 5, includes new features and enhancements to deliver better application performance and availability for all business-critical applications. It also introduces advanced automation capabilities to free IT from manual processes and allow it to be more responsive to changing business requirements.

VMware vSphere 5 supports virtual machines (VMs) that are up to four times more powerful than previous versions — VMs can now be configured with up to 1 terabyte of memory and 32 virtual CPUs. When combined with VMware vSphere 5’s enhanced High Availability, these gains in VM scalability and performance enable customers to virtualize any business-critical applications with confidence in the application’s continued performance and availability.

VMware vSphere 5 and the cloud infrastructure suite are supported by more than 25,000 partners, including technology partners, independent software vendors (ISVs), solution providers, service providers, and systems integrators, as well as every major global hardware manufacturer.

VMware vSphere 5 is currently available in packages and prices that address the widest range of customer requirements, starting at $83 per processor.

VMware Introduces Micro Cloud Foundry

by Leave a Comment

VMware today announced the immediate beta availability of Micro Cloud Foundry as a free download.

Cloud Foundry delivers access to modern, high productivity frameworks and a rich ecosystem of application services from VMware, third parties and the open source community.

A complete version of Cloud Foundry that runs on a developer’s Mac or PC, Micro Cloud Foundry lets developers build end-to-end cloud applications locally, without the hassles of configuring middleware while preserving the choice of where to deploy and the ability to scale their applications without changing a line of code.

Micro Cloud Foundry is a complete version of Cloud Foundry that runs directly on a developers’ machine and offers developers choice of frameworks, choice of application infrastructure services and choice of clouds in which to deploy applications.

Because Micro Cloud Foundry runs in a local virtual machine, developers can create and experiment with cutting-edge applications on their own computers, a model consistent with traditional development processes, but lacking from current PaaS models. As a result, developers can eliminate the need to install and configure complex application infrastructure and thereby accelerate their application development process.

The first version of Micro Cloud Foundry supports popular, high-productivity programming frameworks and application services including Spring for Java, Ruby on Rails and Sinatra, Node.js, Grails and other JVM-based frameworks including Scala Lift, MongoDB, MySQL, and Redis application services.

VMware plans to include support for additional VMware vFabric services in future versions of Micro Cloud Foundry.

Citrix Upgrades XenDesktop

by Leave a Comment

Citrix Systems has announced a new version of its XenDesktop product line (5.5) that adds many enhancements in personalization, user experience and rich consumer device support.

The new XenDesktop 5.5 adds the “Personal vDisk” technology acquired earlier this month from RingCube to all editions of XenDesktop, making it easier for customers to deploy highly personalized virtual desktops at a lower cost.

XenDesktop 5.5 also features the most significant enhancement in company history to its Citrix HDX user experience technology, enabling customers to deliver high-definition virtual desktops up to three times faster for both LAN and WAN users.

XenDesktop 5.5, XenApp 6.5 and XenClient 2 are available for download today from the Citrix website.

Suggested pricing for XenDesktop starts at $95 per user or device for the VDI-only edition. Comprehensive desktop and application virtualization is available in the Enterprise or Platinum editions, priced at $225 and $350. XenClient 2 is available standalone as a free download from the Citrix website and included along with the Synchronizer for XenClient with XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum.

Gartner: Global IT Spending To Grow 7.1 Percent In 2011

by Leave a Comment

Worldwide IT spending is on pace to grow 7.1 percent in 2011, according to the latest quarterly spending outlook by Gartner. Analysts have revised overall IT forecast spending growth in U.S. dollar terms, up from their first quarter update, when they projected 5.6 percent growth for 2011.

“It is a bit surprising that we have not seen a more significant impact on our global IT spending forecast as a results of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, but despite widespread concerns about disruptions to the supply of critical components in the initial aftermath of the natural disaster, there has not been a dramatic impact on overall IT spending,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner.

“For 2011 as a whole, we expect Japan IT spending to be down in local currency, but we expect a positive growth trend to emerge in the second half of the year and continue into 2012.”

Global IT services is forecast to reach $846 billion in 2011, a 6.6 percent increase from 2010. The computing and hardware segment is poised for the strongest growth with spending forecast to grow 11.7 percent in 2011.

Gartner’s latest forecast found that worldwide public cloud services spending is to total $89 billion in 2011, up from $74 billion in 2010. The market is forecast to reach $177 billion by 2015.

However, to put this growth in context, Gartner analysts said public cloud services spending was only about 2 percent of global IT spending in 2010, and by 2015 the level of spending on public cloud services will be less than 5 percent of the total spent on IT overall.

CA Technologies Buys ITKO For $330 Million In Cash

by 1 Comment

CA Technologies today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Interactive TKO (ITKO), a provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, for $330 million in an all-cash transaction.

CA Technologies says the acquisition of ITKO will add a new dimension to modern IT management and extend it to encompass the entire service delivery lifecycle.

In particular, the acquisition should help its customers overcome the limitations of current organizational approaches, breaking down the silos across development, testing and operations.

For the trailing 12-month period ending March 31, 2011, ITKO reported revenue of approximately $39 million, more than doubling the prior 12-month period. For this same period, ITKO was profitable and generated positive cash flow.

The acquisition is expected to be completed within three months, pending regulatory approval.

At the close of the transaction, Shridhar Mittal, president and CEO of ITKO, will join CA Technologies as general manager of ITKO, a division of CA Technologies.

It is anticipated that all of ITKO’s approximately 120 employees will join CA Technologies.