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CA Technologies Buys Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure Consulting Firm 4Base Technology

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CA Technologies last week announced the acquisition of privately-held 4Base Technology, a virtualization and cloud infrastructure consulting firm. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

4Base will become the CA Virtualization and Cloud Strategy group, a competency practice within the CA Services division.

With experience in more than 300 engagements, 4Base will help customers move quickly, pragmatically and successfully from virtualization to cloud by providing strategic advice and implementation expertise.

Andi Mann, vice president of virtualization product marketing at CA, notes in his blog post, this acquisition will help customers overcome the many difficult barriers to adopting and expanding virtualization and cloud computing, including staffing and skills issues, Line-of-Business (LOB) issues, ‘VM sprawl’ and ‘VM stall’, and heterogeneous virtualization knowledge.

Cloud Computing Markets Projected To Reach $17 Billion by 2016

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MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of Wintergreen Research’s new report “Cloud Based Office Productivity Software Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2010 to 2016” to their collection of Internet Applications market reports.

Virtualization of software and servers creates ways to generate more effective automated control of personal and team business data. Cloud systems manage personal productivity: word processors, spread sheets, presentation logic, and collaboration tools available online.

Software is needed for management and sales implementations of different productivity tasks in different industries. Group cooperation is supported with the systems.

According to the report, IBM Lotus is positioned to support office productivity beyond the desktop and outside data centers. Businesses are generating 15 petabytes of new information each day. There is a massive increase of connected devices used to work with that data.

Systems are optimized for remarkably diverse workloads managed by businesses, organizations, and governments. IBM offers flexible sourcing options including cloud computing.

Google Apps are considered the premier offering for cloud based office productivity systems. There is a fundamental difference between to personal computer client offerings and the cloud offerings. The cloud offerings are tuned to leverage the flexibility and collaboration achievable from groups working online together. Cloud based systems operate from memory and are designed to be instantly available. Personal client device office productivity software systems provide a more elaborate feature function package funded and supported by a large installed base, reports Wintergreen.

Cloud computing provides support for collaboration. Collaboration is supported by Google Apps and Google Docs. Users can edit documents at the same time, creating a compelling team based system, permitting managers to get all members of the team involved in thinking about and designing project.

Cloud computing strategy is positioned to help organizations make a transition from siloed personal data to a shared virtualized data center in an evolutionary manner. Not every enterprise is ready for a move to cloud computing. IT organizations want to evolve from datacenter architectures to cloud computing. Premise investments are being leveraged.

According to the report, vendors are thinking beyond the desktop and outside data centers to supporting the evolution of business across national boundaries, providing a global reach to marketing departments. Cloud office productivity tools support that strategy.

Office productivity software enables use of computers intuitively. Continuous systems upgrades improve the functions available to users. Businesses are generating 15 petabytes of new information each day. There is a massive increase of connected devices used to work with that data.

As systems are optimized for remarkably diverse workloads managed by businesses, organizations, and governments, office productivity systems play a part in generating useful information sharing. Flexible sourcing options including cloud computing are being used to generate team documents.

The major management objectives for this critical area of office productivity applications implementation include words, numbers, image, and video content management. Cloud based systems are simple to use and collect different types of information in a cohesive manner.

The fundamental aspect of cloud office productivity applications implementation relates to flexibility. The ability to be responsive to changing market conditions is central to the modern IT team collaboration task. The desire for systems that support flexibility is anticipated to spur rapid growth of cloud computing office productivity systems.

Cloud productivity office computing markets at $3.3 billion in 2009 are anticipated to reach $17 billion by 2016.

Quest Buys Private Cloud Automation Software Maker Surgient

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Quest Software has announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Surgient, a provider of private cloud automation software.

The Austin, Texas-based company’s Surgient Platform enables organizations to deploy and manage secure cloud infrastructures to gain business agility and reduce costs.

With the Surgient Automation Platform, organizations can create robust and secure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds that may be shared across the organization. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close during the third quarter of 2010.

Private cloud computing is emerging as a fundamental requirement for businesses.

According to a recent IDC survey, 73 percent of all organizations are evaluating, planning or have already implemented private cloud strategies. As a leading provider of cloud automation solutions, Surgient provides a patented and proven technology that supports heterogeneous hypervisor environments and diverse customer environments including mid-market, enterprise and managed service providers.

Surgient has more than 60 customers with 160 successful deployments.

Citrix Reports Q2 2010 Financial Results, Shares Soar

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Citrix Systems today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2010, sending its shares soaring.

In the second quarter of fiscal 2010, Citrix achieved revenue of $458 million, compared to $393 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2009, representing 17 percent revenue growth.

Net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2010 was $48 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, compared to $43 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, for the second quarter of fiscal 2009.

Net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2010 includes approximately $13 million in income tax expense, or approximately $0.07 per diluted share, for the settlement in principle the company reached with the Internal Revenue Service related to transfer pricing issues as previously announced.

Non-GAAP net income in the second quarter of fiscal 2010 was $78 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, compared to $72 million, or $0.39 per diluted share, in the comparable period last year. Non-GAAP net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2010 includes the $13 million tax expense, or approximately $0.07 per diluted share, as noted above.

Both periods exclude the effects of amortization of intangible assets primarily related to business combinations, stock-based compensation expenses, charges recorded in connection with the restructuring program that the company implemented in January 2009 and the tax effects related to those items.

In reviewing the second quarter results of 2010, compared to the second quarter of 2009:

  • Product license revenue increased 15 percent;
  • Revenue from license updates grew 13 percent;
  • Online services revenue grew 18 percent;
  • Technical services revenue, which is comprised of consulting, education and technical support, grew 35 percent;
  • Revenue increased in the America’s region by 17 percent, increased in the EMEA region by 11 percent and increased in the Pacific region by 31 percent;
  • Deferred revenue totaled $686 million, compared to $538 million on June 30, 2009;
  • GAAP operating margin was 16 percent for the quarter and non-GAAP operating margin was 26 percent for the quarter, excluding the effects of amortization of intangible assets primarily related to business combinations, stock-based compensation expense and charges recorded in connection with the 2009 restructuring program;
  • Other income decreased 83 percent primarily due to losses on the re-measurement of non U.S. dollar denominated financial statement balances;
  • Cash flow from operations was $103 million, compared with $86 million in the second quarter of 2009; and
  • The company repurchased 2.2 million shares at an average price of $46.74 or $101 million.

Citrix management expects to achieve the following results during its third fiscal quarter of 2010 ending September 30, 2010:

  • Net revenue is expected to be in the range of $450 million to $460 million; and
  • GAAP diluted earnings per share is expected to be in the range of $0.31 to $0.32. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is expected to be in the range of $0.48 to $0.49, excluding $0.08 related to the effects of amortization of intangible assets primarily related to business combinations, $0.16 related to the effects of stock-based compensation expenses, certain charges recorded in conjunction with the company’s 2009 restructuring program, and $(0.06) to $(0.08) for the effect of the differential between the GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates and tax effects related to these items.
  • Interest income is expected to be $4 million.
  • Adjusted tax rate is expected to be in the range of 23% to 24%.

The above statements are based on current expectations. These statements are forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially.

VMware Debuts New Volume Purchasing Program

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VMware today announced a new VMware Volume Purchasing Program (VPP).

VMware VPP is designed to provide customers worldwide with consistent, accumulative software license discounting through an easy-to-use, tier-based points system. The program helps maximize the value derived from volume purchases of VMware software licenses, including significant cost savings on VMware solutions and increased budget predictability for future purchases.

VPP is offered to customers through authorized VMware partners.

With VMware VPP, customers may enroll for a VPP membership and earn points on VMware products and services. Points are stored in customers’ accounts and accrue toward four tier levels in the program, with each tier level delivering additional incremental discounts that are applied automatically to new purchases depending on a customer’s tier.

Customers can accumulate points over a rolling eight-quarter period and access an easy-to-use online portal to track the number of points and eligible discount levels. For qualified purchases, VMware VPP provides customers with discounts ranging from 4 percent to 12 percent off the published local VMware MSRP prices.

VMworld 2010 Will Happen In San Francisco And Copenhagen

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VMware announced that VMworld 2010 makes its return to San Francisco Aug. 30 through Sept. 2 at Moscone Center and will also be held Oct. 12-14 at The Bella Center in Copenhagen.

With more than 19,000 attendees expected worldwide and more than 200 sponsors and exhibitors, including Global Diamond sponsors Cisco, Dell, EMC and NetApp and Global Platinum sponsors HP and Intel, VMworld 2010 will spotlight VMware and the industry’s commitment to virtualization and the transformation to IT as a Service.

The theme of VMworld 2010 is “Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds,” showcasing the journey to cloud computing through virtualization. Attendees will explore new roads that will help them discover, learn and break new ground in transforming IT.

This year, all VMworld labs will be powered by the VMware LabCloud portal, a self-service interface custom-built to enable attendees to access lab courses and content, allowing VMware to increase the number of labs offered and provide attendees more opportunities to explore how virtualization can make a powerful impact on their organization. VMworld will stage more than 22,000 lab seats through 480 simultaneous user workstations during the four-day event.

To build out this environment, VMware has committed more than 75,000 man-hours in lab creation and development to produce 30 lab topics — all of which are powered by the VMware vSphere(TM) cloud infrastructure platform and hardware technologies donated by more than a dozen sponsors. The labs will cover everything from virtualized desktop infrastructure, through the VMware vSphere-powered datacenter and into the VMware-powered cloud.

With easy access to more than 150 VMware subject matter experts on hand to answer questions and explore options, participants will get one-on-one attention and still have the flexibility to move at their own pace.