News

Celceo Enhances Application Virtualization Technology, Bridges Virtual and Non-virtual Worlds

April 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Last week, Boston-based Celceo unveiled the latest generation of its application virtualization technology for individuals and small businesses. With this latest release, Celceo allows “virtual applications to integrate with Windows while bridging the virtual and non-virtual worlds”.

From the press release:

“We were the first to virtualize applications that have already been deployed, and we’re proud to be the first in bridging the virtual and non-virtual worlds,” said Christian Carrillo, Founder of Celceo. “Application virtualization has great potential but has suffered from high adoption cost. Innovations like these make the technology more accessible to more people.”

…

Carrillo added: “At Celceo, we’ve created a platform that helps us realize that future by making application virtualization flexible and transparent to end users, yet powerful enough to grow well beyond a software deployment tool to a sophisticated management, auditing and security backbone.”

Celceo offers its technology to solutions providers through its Application Virtualization SDK. Celceo’s SDK is designed to integrate with enterprise management software as well as endpoint security agents, allowing enterprise administrators to control applications, audit their utilization and performance, and deploy new applications. Celceo also distributes a stand-alone virtualization product, Celceo SmartBox, built on top of its SDK, for individuals and small organizations who want to start using application virtualization today.

Gartner: Virtualization Wave To Cause Huge Market Disruption And Consolidation Through 2012

April 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Gartner says virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012.

From the press release (emphasis ours):

“Virtualization will transform how IT is managed, what is bought, how it is deployed, how companies plan and how they are charged. As a result, virtualization is creating a new wave of competition among infrastructure vendors that will result in considerable market disruption and consolidation over the next few years.”

According to Gartner, the leading edge of this change is server virtualization, which promises to unlock much of the underutilized capacity of existing server architectures. Server virtualization is already having an impact on the server market; Gartner believes that virtualization reduced the x86 server market by 4 % in 2006. As hypervisor prices drop sharply and management costs decrease because of increased competition, virtualization will have a significantly larger impact, and Gartner analysts predict that more than 4 million virtual machines will be installed on x86 servers by 2009.

The use of PC virtualization is also set to increase rapidly. The number of virtualized PCs is expected to grow from less than 5 million in 2007 to 660 million by 2011. On the PC, the decoupling technology that breaks the close ties and dependencies between hardware and software occurs at two levels: between hardware and the operating system (machine virtualization) and between the operating system and applications (application virtualization).

Check out Gartner’s special report on virtualization, including a number of useful guides and a podcast with industry analyst Thomas Bittman.

NComputing Debuts X350

April 2, 2008 by Robin Wauters 12 Comments

NComputing has added another offering to its X-series product line. The new X350 is designed specifically for organizations that want to economically and efficiently add users for the lowest cost and best performance.

Built to accommodate popular slim-line PCs, the X350 kit, with a list price of $249, turns one PC into four virtual desktops – each delivering rich multimedia performance and full-screen video. With a second X350 kit, a total of seven users can share a single PC. The X350 is a lower-cost, low-profile version of the highly successful NComputing X550, which supports up to 11 users on a full-sized PC. And like all NComputing solutions, the X350 features the award-winning NComputing vSpace desktop virtualization software.

The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications use only a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing enables a single PC to be virtualized so that many users can tap the unused capacity and share it as if each person had their own computer. Each user enjoys a full PC experience by connecting their own monitor, keyboard and mouse to an NComputing device, which is then connected to the shared PC. Each X350 kit contains three NComputing XD2 devices and a low-profile PCI card that fits inside space-saving computers. Unlike other desktop virtualization solutions, the patented and highly-efficient X350 delivers rich multimedia and full-screen video.

The X350 is available now from thousands of resellers around the globe. In less than two years, NComputing has sold more than one million seats, making it the largest provider of ultra-low-cost computing solutions. NComputing’s simplicity and ease of use have contributed to rapid worldwide acceptance: anyone with basic PC skills can install an NComputing solution and the savings are immediate. Over 40,000 organizations in 140 countries have deployed NComputing to slash their computing costs and electric consumption. Each access device uses just one watt of electricity, compared to 110 for a standalone PC, making NComputing the greenest computing solution on earth.

VKernel Partners With Prosper Intelligence And The Virtualization Consolidation Academy

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VKernel, a Portsmouth-based provider of virtual appliances for managing virtual server environments, announced today a partnership with Prosper Intelligence and its Virtualization Consolidation Academy. Under the agreement, Prosper Intelligence will distribute VKernel’s Suite of Virtual Appliances for managing VMware ESX environments to its network of partners and solution providers throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

From the press release:

“The VKernel Virtual Appliance Suite for Systems Management is a set of “plug-and-play” virtual appliances designed to quickly solve real world systems management challenges as organizations migrate to VMware virtual environments. VKernel products enable IT groups to immediately address today’s critical pain points by providing visibility into the capacity and resource consumption of each virtual machine. VKernel is currently offering a Chargeback Virtual Appliance for gaining cost visibility and a Capacity Analyzer Virtual Appliance for eliminating capacity bottlenecks.”

[Source: BusinessWire]

VirtualLogix Adds Support For Intel VT-d, Now Fit For Windows Environments

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VirtualLogix has updated the Intel Architecture (IA) version of its embedded virtualization stack, which targets performance-critical telecom and datacom applications. VLX for Network Infrastructure (VLX-NI) 3.0 adds support for Intel VT-d (virtualization technology for directed I/O), Microsoft Windows guests, and Core Microarchitecture 3.0, while adding new Eclipse-based set-up tools.

VirtualLogix made the announcement at the Multicore Expo today in Santa Clara, where it also announced having joined the Multicore Association. From the press release:

VirtualLogix’s new release blends the rich Microsoft Windows operating system environment with the existing capabilities of real-time operating systems (RTOS) or Linux by applying real-time virtualization technology on platforms using multicore processors.

Communications applications often require separate hardware to handle Windows interfaces and mission-critical portions of the equipment. VirtualLogix’s real-time virtualization software simplifies the design by allowing all software to share a common hardware platform. With VLX for Network Infrastructure v3.0, networking and telecommunication equipment makers can quickly develop next-generation products, reduce development and bill-of-material costs and lower power consumption. In the industrial and automation markets, where Windows is also widely used to provide user friendly interfaces to machinery, VLX is able to support the time-sensitive control and signal processing functions these areas demand.

[Source: LinuxDevices – who also interviewed VirtualLogix’s VP of Marketing, Mark Milligan]

Citrix Releases XenServer 4.1, Simplifies Pricing Policy

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

This sure took a while: Citrix finally upgraded XenServer yesterday with the 4.1 release, adding some 50 new features for the first major version upgrade since Citrix acquired XenSource last August.

Some of the most compelling new capabilities:

XenMotion: Seamlessly move virtual machines without downtime
XenCenter: Unified virtualization management interface, including servers, storage and networking
Native 64-bit hypervisor: Scalability and support for enterprise applications
Resource Pools: Efficient configuration, allocation and authentication for virtualization resources
XenAPI: Integration with existing management invesments, infrastructure and processes

But it’s the change in pricing policy, which it dubs ‘groundbreaking‘, that deserves a closer look the most: with the release of 4.1, the company is moving away from counting sockets to charging on a per-physical server basis for all XenServer editions. Citrix claims this should let customers have an unlimited number of virtual machines or guest operating systems running on a server for the same price.

XenServer starts at $ 600 per server for an annual license, and $ 900 per server for a perpetual license. Customers using the old pricing structure will need to wait until their current licenses run out before making the change. The new pricing applies to all industry standard 64-bit servers with up to four CPU sockets.

Curious to see if VMware will change its pricing strategy too, and if Microsoft will adapt accordingly (both VMware as Windows Server 2008 Data Center edition with Hyper-V will be charged on a per-processor basis).