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Egenera To Offer A Technology Preview Of Its New Capacity-on-Demand Solution at VMworld 2008

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Egenera today announced an upcoming technology preview of its capacity-on-demand solution developed jointly with VMware. Recently, Egenera had already picked VMware’s virtualization technology to power its BladeFrame Systems.

Set to be unveiled for the first time on the show floor at VMworld, the new joint capacity-on-demand solution will provide VMware VirtualCenter users access to PAN Manager by Egenera processing resources directly through VMware VirtualCenter. With capacity-on-demand, customers benefit from the automatic deployment of ESX hosts onto “bare metal” in response to overutilization that can adversely affect virtual machine performance.

With Egenera’s capacity-on-demand solution, new ESX hosts are automatically registered to VirtualCenter as part of the resource pool, while underutilized ESX hosts can be automatically powered off to reduce energy consumption. In addition, VMware features such as Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) and High Availability (HA) will rebalance virtual machine workloads within the changed environment.

Egenera

[Source: VMblog]

Trading Activity In NetApp, VMware Spikes

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According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, stocks of both NetApp and VMware have been trading at unusual volumes yesterday.

Trading in NetApp spiked to four times the normal level, with investors picking up 38,000 calls that allow them to buy the company’s stock and 5,000 puts that allow them to sell it. NetApp shares closed at $25.55, up 6.1%.

Fueling activity in VMW trading was the recent chatter that Cisco could be interested in acquiring VMware. With calls outnumbering puts by seven to one, traders gravitated to September $45 calls. The contracts are priced at 70 cents and make money if VMware shares jump above $45.70.

They closed at $38.49, up 4.1%.

Nortel Introduces “Office-On-A-Stick”

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Nortel has unveiled a business solution that gives road warriors an ‘office-on-a-stick’ using a specially-formatted USB key for Windows PCs that automates business network access when inserted and protects information and applications by completely removing them when the USB key is removed. The solution – called Nortel Secure Portable Office – combines hardware, software and services to provide simple, secure network access for remote workers.

When the Secure Portable Office USB key is inserted into a Windows PC, user identity is first authenticated. Then a secure network connection is established through Nortel VPN Gateway . Finally, a ‘Virtual Desktop’ is launched, presenting the user with a menu of authorized network applications. An automatic scan for viruses and out-of-date or malicious software can also be configured.

All data and applications are encrypted, both in transit and on the PC. When the USB key is removed, the complete Secure Portable Office environment – including all confidential data and applications – is automatically removed. This helps ensure regulatory compliance by protecting sensitive information that could otherwise be exposed on a lost or stolen laptop.

What separates Secure Portable Office from competitive offerings are the upfront services Nortel provides to help organizations tailor solutions to their own unique requirements. This can include everything from application, security and business continuity needs assessment to network architecture and security policy consulting and solution training.

Nortel Networks
[Source: GigaOM]

What’s “Persystent Virtualization”?

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Persystent Technologies today introduced Persystent Virtualization, a new solution that eases deployment, maintenance and control over virtual desktop environments, while providing end users with greater personalization of their virtual desktops.

Persystent Virtualization automatically protects and enforces the desired state of every virtual desktop in an organization, eliminating the need for IT to continually reconfigure desktops. End users can customize their virtual desktop within enforced corporate configuration standards. This gives them the look and feel of having their own personal computer, a first for virtual desktop users. By enabling personalized virtual desktops, including address books, desktop short cuts, wallpaper and other custom settings, Persystent eases the transition from traditional to virtualized computing.
Persystent Virtualization automatically restores any corrupted operating system, registry, application or setting to ensure compliance with corporate policy guidelines and governance requirements for improved service levels and business continuity. Persystent also eases the process of software patches by capturing the updated image and deploying it to every desktop. In the case of defective patches, Persystent can redeploy a previous configuration within 30 seconds.

Brett Johnson Leaves PlateSpin To Head Sales at DynamicOps

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DynamicOps, the young company recently spun out of Credit Suisse, has every intention of getting its Virtual Resource Manager to market as quickly as possible. The company has managed to attract Brett Johnson as its new Vice President of Sales, reports Alessandro. Johnson is the former Director of Sales for Eastern North America for PlateSpin.

In our recent report about the career moves in the virtualization industry, we noted that Mark Pileski left Novell / PlateSpin for VMLogix, so this is the second executive to leave the recently acquired company.

TBD Networks Goes For Full DataCenter Virtualization With TBDVirtualFabric-VME

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TBDVirtualFabric-VMware Edition (VME) provides the missing pieces for companies to realize the full benefits of Datacenter Virtualization by unifying physical and virtual firewalls and network infrastructure. TBDVirtualFabric-VME was specifically designed to provide a virtual fabric of networking, security, and firewall capabilities to scale VMware environments beyond current limitations.

“TBDVirtualFabric-VME naturally extends the benefits that VMware and VMotion create in current virtual environments,” commented Thomas Ludwig, CEO of TBD Networks. “It delivers benefits of full Datacenter Virtualization within minutes of installation. TBDVirtualFabric-VME automatically discovers the entire physical and virtual network (including firewalls, switches and VLANs), and gives administrators an intuitive GUI to define network topologies, high-availability and security policies. The result is a virtualized environment that complies with enterprise standards and scales to large deployments without giving up on the flexibility of datacenter-wide VMotion.”

TBDVirtualFabric-VME helps companies maximize their return on investment from Datacenter Virtualization efforts. It reduces networking bottlenecks, especially in multi vendor networks (supporting leading vendors such as Cisco, Foundry and Juniper), without compromising security by reducing hardware requirements, and improving the utilization of existing hardware and network links. TBDVirtualFabric-VME permits companies to provision, manage, and reconfigure networks at the speed of business. In addition to improved network performance, availability, and QoS, it can simultaneously help companies reduce security risks and network threats.

TBDVirtualFabric-VME is currently available in beta.