Virtualization.com

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

F5 Networks Enhances BIG-IP VDI Solution Support (Citrix, VMware And Microsoft)

by 1 Comment

F5 Networks has announced support for leading virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions, including Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View, Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and others.

For customers using VDI technologies, F5 offers a unified approach to manage and accelerate network traffic, optimize performance, and centralize access and security policies. Unlike other proprietary solutions, F5 BIG-IP products do not require changes to the delivery infrastructure, thus offering a complement to all VDI deployments.

Support for VDI solutions is available today in version 11 of various BIG-IP products, including BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager, BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, BIG-IP Access Policy Manager and BIG-IP Edge Gateway.

Integrated web interface service and support for Citrix Multi-Stream ICA are new features of BIG-IP version 11.1 products, also available today.

No additional licensing is required to support VDI.

Nicira Comes Out Of Stealth Mode With “Game-Changing” Network Virtualization Platform

by 1 Comment

Backed by top-tier VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz, NEA and Lightspeed Venture Partners, network virtualization company Nicira has publicly unveiled its Network Virtualization Platform (NVP), a software-based system that creates a distributed virtual network infrastructure in cloud data centers that is completely decoupled and independent from physical network hardware.

Fresh out of stealth mode, Nicira has already attracted AT&T, eBay, Fidelity Investments, NTT and Rackspace as customers.

From the official company pitch:

NVP was designed to address the shortcomings of traditional networks by offering a platform that provides the operational model of a virtual machine. While applications have been decoupled from servers through compute virtualization, they have not yet been decoupled from the network through any type of scalable network virtualization. As a result, virtualized data centers face limits to what applications they can support and where the workloads can be placed.

These limitations restrict workload mobility, thus lowering resource utilization of servers, a primary cause of operational overhead. Legacy approaches can leave as much as 20%-30% of the server capacity in data centers under utilized and drive up networking costs several fold, based on Nicira’s work with the largest cloud data center operators.

NVP forms a thin software layer that treats the physical network as an IP backplane. This approach allows the creation of virtual networks that have the same properties and services as physical networks, such as security and QoS policies, L2 reachability, and higher-level service capabilities such as stateful firewalling.

These virtual networks can be created dynamically to support VM mobility anywhere within or between data centers without service disruption or address changes.

Will people really call it the ‘VMware of networking’, then? Likely.

NVP software is delivered through a usage-based, monthly subscription-pricing model, which scales per virtual network port. Customers only pay for what they use, and pricing scales accordingly.

Nicira was founded by networking research leaders Martin Casado and Nick McKeown from Stanford University and Scott Shenker from University of California.

The company has raised $50 million in funding to date, from the aforementioned venture capital firms as well as individual investors including VMware co-founder Diane Greene and Benchmark Capital co-founder Andy Rachleff.

Nick Lowe Joins AppSense As VP of Sales for EMEA

by Leave a Comment

AppSense, provider of user virtualization technology, has announced the appointment of Nick Lowe as vice president of sales in the Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) markets.

Lowe’s responsibilities will include overseeing all sales, services and strategic alliances within the EMEA region, as well as driving additional business in new EMEA territories.

Lowe most recently was vice president of sales, EMEA at Cyber-Ark Software. Prior to Cyber-Ark, Lowe spent eight years as regional director of Northern Europe for Check Point Software Technologies. Previously, Lowe held senior positions in sales management at Sun Microsystems and Nortel where he was part of the acquisition of Bay Networks.

Lowe will be located in the AppSense London office.

He holds an M.B.A. from Stanford Business School as well as a M.A. in Computer Science from Queen’s College Cambridge and a B.S. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Portsmouth.

Nebula Appoints Dell Exec Dave Withers As SVP Of Global Field Operations

by Leave a Comment

Nebula, developer of a hardware appliance that enables enterprises to deploy large scale private cloud computing infrastructures at low cost, has announced that former Dell executive Dave Withers has joined the company’s executive team as Senior Vice President of Global Field Operations.

At Dell, Withers led the storage business in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Withers joined Dell via the acquisition of Ocarina Networks, a storage technology vendor, where he was Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development.

Prior to Ocarina Networks, he was the Senior Director of Business Development at Isilon Systems leading up to a successful IPO and acquisition by EMC for $2.2 billion in 2010.

Former Cisco Exec Simon Aspinall Joins Virtustream As CMO

by Leave a Comment

Virtustream has announced that Simon Aspinall has joined its executive team as chief marketing officer. Aspinall spent more than a decade at Cisco Systems and, at Virtustream, will drive strategic marketing initiatives as the company expands its xStream cloud solution product suite, including the xStream Software Infrastructure-as-a-Service (SIaaS) offering and more.

Aspinall will lead Virtustream’s Silicon Valley Office in San Francisco.

Most recently, Aspinall led Cisco’s global marketing teams for Cloud, Service Provider Data Center and Mobile solutions. During his decade at Cisco, Aspinall has also led both business development and sales teams in Europe, the United States and Asia.

Aspinall’s appointment as chief marketing officer follows a year of strong growth for Virtustream; the company opened four new offices in 2011, and recently acquired cloud software company Enomaly, to enhance its xStream cloud solutions and ecosystem.