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

Virtual Computer Debuts Global Partner Program

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Virtual Computer has announced the launch of its global partner program. This program is designed to help solution providers and managed service providers (MSPs) set themselves apart from competitors by selling a client-hosted virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution.

This enables solution providers and MSPs to effectively deliver on desktop virtualization and management initiatives as well as to focus on additional high-value projects and services.

The Virtual Computer NxTop desktop virtualization solution balances the manageability and budget needs of IT professionals with the freedom and flexibility end users demand. Unlike traditional server-hosted VDI, NxTop offers centralized management with localized execution to address all of the challenges associated with traditional server-hosted VDI, including high server and network costs, low performance, and limited mobility, giving partners a competitive advantage and improving customer satisfaction.

As part of the program, partners will benefit from an award winning client-hosted desktop virtualization solution. In addition, to help partners attain greater profitability, Virtual Computer’s new partner program offers sales and technical resources, demand generation tools, online self- paced sales and technical courses.

HP Launches New Cloud Software Solutions

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HP recently announced new software solutions that improve collaboration among application delivery teams, enabling organizations to accelerate business innovation and lower operational costs.

The new HP software solutions are key components to the HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) suite, which accelerates application delivery with a single platform, while enhancing collaboration among application delivery teams.

The HP solutions provide business analysts, developers and testers with visibility across the life cycle and new levels of automation to streamline the delivery process.

The new HP ALM software solutions include:

HP Service Virtualization 1.0

integrates with a broad set of application life cycle management solutions to reduce complexity and business risks. By accessing a simulated environment immediately, organizations can enhance performance testing of composite applications.

The simulated environment also eliminates the need to build a redundant test environment, access production systems or recreate a proxy to mimic service behaviors.

HP Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI)

is an enterprise technology agnostic solution that turns disparate data into actionable intelligence. HP ALI, combined with HP ALM 11, provides a real-time view into changes made to source code while allowing developers to work with the tools of their choice. This allows organizations to measure the impact of changes on requirements, tests and defects for a complete analysis of application quality prior to release.

HP Agile Accelerator 5.0

features a new scheduling tool for viewing deliverables in development and provides real-time visibility across the application life cycle for rapid response to changing business requirements.

VirtualWorks Debuts PartnerWorks Alliance Program, Partners With Lifeboat Distribution

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VirtualWorks Group, which provides content virtualization solutions for tackling data sprawl, recently unveiled the first phase of its PartnerWorks alliance program, designed for channel partners including distributors and value-added resellers.

The PartnerWorks alliance program, which will be rolled out in phases, will equip a global network of channel partners, technology partners and software developers with best-practice information, resources and tools to expand and promote the market for content virtualization solutions that optimize the value of information for organizations.

The company today also announced it has signed its first distribution agreement with Lifeboat Distribution, an international specialty software distributor for virtualization and other technically sophisticated products.

Under the agreement, Lifeboat will distribute VirtualWorks’ content virtualization software in North America.

The first phase of the PartnerWorks program being introduced today arms resellers and distributors with product information, training and technical resources to successfully sell and support VirtualWorks’ content virtualization solutions. The program includes two levels of participation, Premier or Registered, based upon the reseller’s technical expertise, sales volume and overall commitment to VirtualWorks. The company is now actively recruiting value-added resellers into the PartnerWorks program ahead of its product launch, scheduled for later this summer.

Ziften Launches With $5.8 Million In Series A Funding

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Ziften Technologies has officially launched and announced a $5.8 million Series A round of funding that has fueled the company’s growth since its origin in early 2010.

Ziften focuses on enterprise system efficiency, introducing software dedicated to improving endpoint efficiency, user productivity, and device service lifetimes way beyond traditional desktop management by increasing Quality of Service (QoS) across all endpoints within an enterprise.

Ziften’s software directs and reallocates computing resources to the applications of highest business value, benefiting the enterprise, employees, and IT.

Ziften closed $5.8 Million Series A funding from Fayez Sarofim & Co. and Trellis Partners.

Ziften executives bring together experience from technology’s most regarded brands: Akami, AMD, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and CalTech. Most notably, this team worked together as the founders of WholeSecurity, an enterprise security leader snapped up by Symantec in 2005.

Product details will be announced shortly.

Gluster Names Rob Bearden To Its Board

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Gluster, provider of open source storage solutions, has announced that Rob Bearden has joined the company’s board of directors. Gluster provides open source storage solutions for public, private and hybrid clouds.

Throughout his 20-year career, Bearden has made significant contributions in the open source community.

He is currently president and COO of Hortonworks, company focused on adoption and maturation of the open source Apache Hadoop project. Previously, he served as president and chief operating officer of SpringSource until its acquisition by VMware, as COO of JBOSS through its acquisition by RedHat, and as chairman of the board of Pentaho.

Bearden will support Gluster’s continued growth and will provide guidance to help further develop its open source community.

Prior to SpringSource, Bearden served as entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley.

He was also COO for OpenSpan, a desktop integration software provider.

Silver Peak Announces ‘Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture’

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Silver Peak Systems, provider of data center class wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions, recently announced its Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture (VXOA), a combination of software and flexible pricing options that enable customers, partners, and service providers to deploy WAN optimization more conveniently than ever.

VXOA takes the underlying software that is used to power the entire family of Silver Peak NX, VX, and VRX WAN optimization products and introduces a new software development kit (SDK), an application programming interface (API), and new pricing options to facilitate WAN optimization deployments on a variety of industry standard hardware platforms and hypervisors.

This allows for tight integration with third-party hardware, including stand-alone servers, blades, storage arrays, and routers.

The growing use of virtualization, cloud services, and distributed applications is gated by an underlying WAN infrastructure plagued by bandwidth limitations, latency, and packet loss. This has driven a need for more flexible WAN optimization that can be cost-effectively deployed across private and public networks — from the cloud, to data centers, to branch offices.

Proprietary and fixed hardware-based offerings have been unable to service this market effectively because they are tightly bound to the underlying hardware in a closed architecture, limiting deployment flexibility and scalability. Silver Peak’s open architecture, via its software-based approach, dynamically leverages the performance of standard CPUs, general-purpose hardware, and standard hypervisors to provide customers the most comprehensive options for deploying WAN optimization on any platform.

Silver Peak’s VXOA supports the integration of data center class virtual WAN optimization with third-party products. Silver Peak VXOA allows for Silver Peak to be deployed, virtually, on any platform that meets the minimum system requirements.

This includes virtual machines, stand-alone servers, storage arrays, and blades on a router or multi-function device. The Silver Peak VXOA also includes an SDK with open application protocol interfaces (APIs) to allow technology partners to integrate Silver Peak’s data center class WAN optimization into their own products.