News

Big in Japan: NEC Soft and DataCore Renew OEM Agreement

August 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

NEC Soft and DataCore Software today announced the renewal of their OEM relationship under which NEC Soft builds and markets its MelodiousStor storage virtualization appliance.

Japan is moving to server virtualization. The benefits are undeniable and cannot be resisted in a competitive, global economy. It has been observed elsewhere that the rise in adoption of server virtualization causes customers to think differently about their storage. They want their storage to become as mobile and efficient as their virtual machines, and they are very interested in how they can build excellent flexibility and storage provisioning efficiency into their existing storage environments, while at the same time addressing increased requirements for storage protection, availability and performance inherent in a virtual server environment.

NEC Soft and DataCore believe that Japan’s adoption of storage virtualization will occur in parallel to its adoption of server virtualization, which is currently well underway. By combining NEC Soft’s expertise and acceptance in the Japanese market with DataCore’s storage virtualization and advanced storage management, the two companies are offering Japanese customers the opportunity to integrate into their existing storage environment important advances in thin provisioning capacity allocation, high performance data caching, high availability, disaster recovery and data migration.

NEC Soft, which through its related companies also offers VMware and Microsoft solutions, will market the DataCore, VMware and Microsoft virtual server solutions separately and as part of a Total Enterprise Virtualization solution offering.

DataCore Software

Sun Offers Early Access to xVM Server, Public Version Coming Soon

August 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

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Sun Microsystems has begun an early access program for its xVM Server hypervisor, a key component of its upcoming virtualization product line, and intends to make a publicly downloadable version available within about a month, according to a blog post last week by Steve Wilson, VP of xVM at Sun.

Update: see RedMonk’s Michael Coté review and demo the xVM Server hypervisor.

“Given that we’re getting very close to shipping, it’s time to give everyone an update on progress and do a more in-depth sneak peek at features than I’ve done in the past. First, a quick reminder about what’s included in the xVM Portfolio so you can see where xVM Server fits. The picture below shows how this fits together. We have xVM VirtualBox for small scale desktop virtualization, and VDI as a management layer that scales out to very large-scale desktop consolidation projects. Then, on the server side, we have xVM Server as the software to virtualize a single server, and xVM Ops Center as the management tool for large scale virtual and physical data center. xVM VirtualBox, xVM Ops Center and VDI are all commercially available today and rapidly being deployed by customers.”

Sun Microsystems

IGEL Technology Announces Certification For VMware Virtual Desktop Manager

August 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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Igel Technology recently announced certification for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager, VMware’s connection broker, on IGEL’s Microsoft Windows XP Embedded range of Universal Desktops.

The software is available recently as a partial update for IGEL’s Windows XP Embedded models, and allows customers deploying VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to deliver an enhanced user experience.

IGEL Windows XP Embedded based Universal Desktops add additional unique benefits to VMware VDI hosted PCs. They contain many digital services above the standard Microsoft RDP, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. For example, most models come with built-in Java Runtime Environments, terminal emulation and PDF readers, allowing users to deliver certain server-based applications outside the virtual connection. This helps organizations reduce server load and enhance the desktop experience. In addition, all models come with a ThinPrint client, allowing organizations to implement sophisticated print management in VMware VDI environments as well as IGEL’s Multiscreen Agent, a free-of-charge server-side software application, designed for multi monitor environments, that allows users to maximize applications to dedicated screens even with a spanned VMware virtual desktop.

Surgient Partners With Capgemini, IPO or Acquisition Imminent?

August 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

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Capgemini, provider of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, announced today that Capgemini Financial Services USA has signed an alliance agreement with Surgient.

“By partnering with Surgient, we can now offer clients access to environment configurations through a centrally managed, shared service, eliminating manual provisioning work and delivering much higher utilization of expensive pre-production infrastructure. The results expected are shorter response times, reduced costs and ultimately, better business support,” said Charlie Li, vice president of the Quality Management and Testing Practice at Capgemini’s Financial Services Strategic Business Unit. “Delivering quality applications is closely tied to performance and reputation — and with this innovative virtualization solution, we can help global firms become more agile and better focus on their frontier application strategy in meeting their diverse and growing business needs.”

Meanwhile, VMblog points to a month old article on Austin Business Journal about Surgient, speculating about a future IPO or acquisition.

Surgient apparently hit its stride this year after tweaking its sales approach last summer, allowing companies to buy licenses for its virtual lab management software. President and CEO Tim Lucas says the growing popularity of virtualization gave Surgient the boost and a chance to double its revenue this year.

Lucas expects revenue to exceed $20 million for 2008. And the company has recently signed 20 large customer deals, including German tech companies SAP AG and Siemans AG. “We’re profitable now and cash flow is funding the growth of the business,” he says.

A report by The 451 Group cites HP and Borland Software as possible buyers of the Austin company. Lucas agrees that acquisition is a possibility but says an initial public offering could be considered as well.

Surgient

Symbio Adds Ericom’s Virtualization Solution To Boot Appliance and Boot Stick

August 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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Symbio Technologies, provider of what they call “green” stateless computing, announced today that it has added Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect client to its Symbiont Boot Appliance and Symbiont Boot Stick after signing technology licensing and reseller agreements with Ericom Software.

Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect provides secure local and remote access to enterprise mission-critical applications running on a broad range of Microsoft Windows Terminal Servers, Virtual Desktops (VDI), Blade PCs, and legacy hosts. PowerTerm WebConnect is a platform and hypervisor agnostic solution that enables organizations to standardize on one solution for the management and delivery of server-based applications and virtual desktops.

Symbiont Boot Appliance and Symbiont Boot Stick users can deploy Ericom – or any other software loaded on their server. The Symbiont boot products, which are available from Symbio Technologies’ global network of value-added resellers, support virtually any type of computer, using their own operating system to power the hardware and connect users to terminal servers.

Symbio Technologies

Ericom Software

Update On ESX 3.5 Issue: A Letter from Paul Maritz

August 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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New VMware CEO Paul Maritz has issued an official statement about the major bug plaguing customers who had updated to ESX / ESXi 3.5 Update 2 and experienced a serious problem yesterday due to a mistake in the licensing code.

The letter in full:

“Last night, we became aware of a code issue with the recently released update to ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (Update 2).

When the time clock in a server running ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2 hits 12:00AM on August 12th, 2008, the released code causes the product license to expire. The problem has also occurred with a recent patch to ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2. When an ESX or ESXi 3.5 server thinks its license has expired, the following can happen:

Virtual machines that are powered off cannot be turned on;
Virtual machines that have been suspended fail to leave suspend mode; and,
Virtual machines cannot be migrated using VMotion.

The issue was caused by a piece of code that was mistakenly left enabled for the final release of Update 2. This piece of code was left over from the pre-release versions of Update 2 and was designed to ensure that customers are running on the supported generally available version of Update 2.

In remedying the situation, we’ve already released an express patch for those customers that have installed/upgraded to ESX or ESXi 3.5 Update 2. Within the next 24 hours, we also expect to issue a full replacement for Update 2, which should be used by customers who want to perform fresh installs of ESX or ESXi.

I am sure you’re wondering how this could happen. We failed in two areas:

Not disabling the code in the final release of Update 2; and
Not catching it in our quality assurance process.

We are doing everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen again. VMware prides itself on the quality and reliability of our products, and this incident has prompted a thorough self-examination of how we create and deliver products to our customers. We have kicked off a comprehensive, in-depth review of our QA and release processes, and will quickly make the needed changes.

I want to apologize for the disruption and difficulty this issue may have caused to our customers and our partners. Your confidence in VMware is extremely important to us, and we are committed to restoring that confidence fully and quickly.

Thank You,

Paul Maritz
President and CEO
VMware”