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

Roger Baskerville Leaves Citrix / XenSource

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Roger Baskerville has left Citrix, where he started out as the Sales Director of Xensource EMEA , after the Citrix merger to become Regional Director Northern Europe Server Virtualization .

During his years at Xensource Roger was one of the first commercial pushers of Xen and later XenEnterprise.

Roger has now joined Vizioncore as Vice President for EMEA and he will be responsible for EMEA operations. He leads the sales, marketing and systems engineering teams based across the region. Baskerville has held a variety of senior channel focused EMEA sales leadership positions with both mature high tech organizations as well as start-up operations. Previous companies include LightPointe, Palm, Compaq and NCR. A seasoned industry speaker who is both technically astute and sales focussed, Baskerville brings with him a wealth of experience in virtualization and international sales.

Earlier this year Quest fully acquired VizionCore as part of their journey into virtualization, after earlier
already owning a smaller part of the company. VizionCore then was described as the leading provider of disaster recovery and other products for virtual infrastructure management.

Today their website reads
“VizionCore Inc. provides software that helps organizations safeguard and optimize their virtualized environments and allows them to extract the maximum return on their investment in the VMware platform. Vizioncore’s software products support essential IT strategies, including business continuity, high availability and disaster recovery.”

With this move Roger stays in the Virtualization world where he has worked for the past couple of years, however moving from a fully Open Source based technology to a back to a proprietary environment.

The bigger question however is .. who else will be leaving Citrix/ XenSource. and when ? XenSource has been with Citrix for about a year now .. maybe there are other people jumping ship.

VMware Set To Slash Software Prices By 10%

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According to Microscope, VMware will slash its list price by 10% from Monday.  Matt Piercy, senior director of OEM alliances EMEA confirmed the price reduction.

This cancels out a 10% rise the virtualisation behemoth introduced on 1 September, which combined with the rallying of the US currency has made VMware less competitive, particularly against Microsoft, said partners.

…

Sources close to the vendor said VMware had not predicted the sweeping moves in the currencies at the time of the September price rise which was making its products appear to be around 20% more expensive.

Hat tip to Alessandro.

Cisco Ups Stake In VMware

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Cisco announced yesterday that it will acquire an increased equity stake in VMware.

Cisco will purchase 500,000 shares of VMware Class A common stock currently held by Intel for approximately $13.3M. Upon closing of the investment, Cisco will own approximately 1.7% percent of VMware’s total outstanding common stock.

Cisco’s purchase is intended to build on the strong inter-company collaboration between Cisco and VMware in the adoption of the companies’ virtualization products and solutions that address the intersection of virtualization and networking technologies.

In September, 2008, Cisco and VMware announced several joint initiatives in the data center virtualization market including the launch of the The Cisco Nexus® 1000V distributed virtual software switch, enhanced professional services and reseller certification training

Ubuntu 8.10 Server Edition Focuses On Virtualization

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On Thursday, Ubuntu Linux distribution organization Canonical flipped the switch on free public downloads of Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition and Ubuntu 8.10 Server Edition, both of which will be supported for 18 months.

Improvements to Ubuntu 8.10 Server Edition focus on virtualization, Java development, system management, and email security. It includes a Virtual Machine builder with which developers can construct customized virtual images, which is based on the most recent version of the Just Enough Operating System (JeOS).

Java developers now have the option of using Apache Tomcat 6.0 and OpenJDK, and ClamAV and SpamAssassin have been added to the main repository to handle anti-spam and anti-virus tasks.

Earlier this week in a conference call with reporters, Mark Shuttleworth, leader of Ubuntu distribution organization Canonical, said the company has yet to turn a profit, but he plans to continue funding it for an additional three to five years.

VMware, Splunk Score High On Deloitte’s Silicon Valley Technology Fast 50 Rankings

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VMware was ranked first in the category ‘Billion Dollar Club’ of the 2008 Silicon Valley Technology Fast 50. The Billion Dollar Club is a category of companies that have achieved $1 billion or more in revenue in fiscal year 2007 and more than doubled in revenue growth over a five year period.

The top company in the Rising Star category was Splunk, an IT Search company innovating large-scale, high-speed indexing for IT infrastructures. Splunk recorded three year revenue growth of 13,870 percent.  The Rising Star is a special award that recognizes fast growing companies that have been in business a minimum of three years.

icomasoft UnvilesVI PowerScripter Professional

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icomasoft (earlier coverage) today announced the release of its new icomasoft VI PowerScripter Professional to define the “next generation of integrated, best-of-breed” management of VMware environments. This first release of VI PowerScripter Professional delivers market-leading management capabilities for VMware ESX and VirtualCenter Servers. It allows to rapidly addressing management and compliance requirements across the virtual infrastructure.

VI PowerScripter Professional includes an integrated scheduler for the automation of management tasks in VMware, a functionality that the VMware community has been looking for. Another important enhancement is a built-in wizard that guides users through script management and scheduling tasks, eliminating human errors in routine jobs.

The newest version of this product also includes SSH CmdLet for file copy and command execution on SSH servers, such as VMware ESX, Linux, Solaris, as well as Network and Storage systems. VI PowerScripter Professional is based upon Microsoft’s de-facto standard “PowerShell” and integrates seamlessly into VMware. All authentications and permission are inherited and, therefore, no additional login procedures are required. With VI PowerScripter Professional customers can use native VirtualCenter scheduled tasks functions and execute VI PowerShell scripts through dynamically created context menus. The product is capable of handling VM or host-based scripts locally and from network shares as well as to automate and control VMware Consolidated Backups.

VI PowerScripter Professional is a major enhancement of VMware ESX and VirtualCenter functionality. It includes a templates repository for the most common VI management tasks, such as “setup and delete virtual switches and port groups”, “change of root passwords on ESX hosts”, “restart of host-based VirtualCenter agents”, “disconnect virtual drives”, search and display of VMware log files, various statistics, etc. For compliance purposes all VI PowerScripter activities are recorded in a log file.

According to feedback from the Virtualization Community during the beta phase, IT administrators can save up to two hours per day by using VI PowerScripter Professional for scheduling and automating their routine administration tasks. Moreover, the product simplifies monitoring and analysis, and provides the foundation for accurate billing and accounting. The fact that VI PowerScripter Professional does not require additional login procedures and permission settings adds to the security of the operational environments. Users will experience the familiar look and feel of VMware management console and do not need to get trained. An included templates repository ensures that customers will benefit from a wide range of best-practice scripts and a quick ROI. Custom-made scripts can be ordered from icomasoft’s consulting services.

icomasoft VI PowerScripter Professional is now available and can be purchased directly from icomasoft. The downloadable full version provides a 15-days trial period. The product sells at € 285.00 per administrator console, including 1st-year maintenance and support. Volume discounts are available.