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

SIMtone Takes Carrier-Grade Virtualization Services International

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SIMtone Corporation today announced the launch of SIMtone International, the company’s newly established international headquarters in Switzerland. SIMtone International is already working with a number of International Telecom and Cable Service Providers to deliver all types of carrier-grade virtual computing services for the enterprise, SMB and consumer markets.

SIMtone

“The widespread availability and accessibility of very high quality wireless and wireline broadband services throughout Europe is now enabling Network Operators to commercially deliver a broad range of value-added services such as virtual PCs,” explained Mario Dal Canto, SIMtone Corporation’s Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. “SIMtone makes virtualization simple, and enables carriers to develop, deploy and deliver new services inexpensively, securely and seamlessly to any connected device on-demand and on-the-fly. We enable a game-changing opportunity for Network Operators to decommoditize their pipes, reduce churn, optimize network utilization, lower costs and increase ARPU with services people need rather than just want. SIMtone is the perfect complement to wireless and wireline broadband connectivity services, and allows telecom, cable and wireless operators to deliver converged mobile services simply and safely everywhere.”

Earlier this year, SIMtone unveiled its virtualization platform and a virtual cloud computer, the SIMtone Virtual PC, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The SIMtone Virtual PC is the first computer-in-the-cloud that delivers a full laptop-like user experience, including high performance screen/sound and full USB functionality, on any Internet connected device, on-demand and on-the-fly.

The telecom market in Europe is progressive and committed to delivering a range of virtual services, such as Virtual PCs bundled with broadband Internet access. According to IDC’s Quarterly Server Tracker, virtualization was a driving force as the EMEA server market reached $4.4 billion in revenues in 1Q08, up 4.8 percent over 1Q07.

SIMtone International already has more than 10 employees in Europe. The company has a technology development center in Ireland and a representative office in Spain and is in the process of establishing its European operation support center on the shores of Lake Leman in Switzerland.

Radiant Logic Releases RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server (VDS) 5.0

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Radiant Logic, provider of virtual directory solutions, today announced the rollout of its latest release, RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server (VDS) 5.0. This “wizard-driven” solution aims to simplify the deployment of identity integration for Web Single Sign-On and Federation.

Radiant Logic

As the newest component of the RadiantOne Identity and Context Virtualization Platform, RadiantOne VDS 5.0 is designed to analyze the steps of identity integration, divide those steps into different tasks and provide tools to solve each task. The result is a wizard-based virtual directory focused on use cases and practical deployments, rather than just tools.

RadiantOne VDS 5.0 turns the complex process of identity integration into a simple, use case driven, point and click operation.

“We are providing our customers with a field tested solution based on virtualization that is not only easy to deploy and risk free, but also the most complete on the market,” said Michel Prompt, CEO of Radiant Logic.

RadiantOne VDS 5.0 features a three-step wizard, designed to connect all backend sources to the virtual directory within minutes. Customers can quickly aggregate and/or integrate identity data from any data source and extend it with additional attributes for authorization. The Virtual Directory Server then leverages this identity information by making it appear as one common virtual LDAP v3 compliant directory that is fully compatible with SUN/RedHat/Netscape directories.

Thz new release also includes a specific set of scenario/wizard driven templates for the deployment of CA SiteMinder, Web SSO, EMC/RSA ClearTrust and IBM TAM.

Radiant Logic VDS

[Source: PR Inside]

VMware Debuts VAssert, A New Workstation API

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VMware just blogged about VAssert (programming guide – PDF), a new API debuting in Workstation 6.5 (beta) that uses the Record and Replay functionality they’ve been talking about for some time now. VAssert (Virtual Assertions) is a relative of your standing programming ASSERT debugging tool, but by delaying assert-checking until later when the exact machine instructions are replayed, it can be “very fast”.

VMware engineers Weiming Zeng and Min Xu demonstrate VAssert within Apache here.

Parascale Raises $11+ Million In Series A Funding For Linux Cloud Storage

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Parascale, a provider of cloud storage solutions for rich media content in traffic-intensive applications, today announced that it has closed an $11.37 million Series A financing round led by venture capital firms Charles River Ventures and Menlo Ventures.

Parascale

Parascale plans to use the funding for product development and marketing initiatives in preparation for the launch of Parascale Cloud Storage (PCS), an application that aggregates disk storage on multiple standard Linux servers providing one highly scalable storage cloud, accessible via standard file access protocols.

According to the news release, Parascale has developed a new class of storage solutions designed to support the wave of content-intensive applications, including video-on-demand, digital document archiving, scientific data analysis, video surveillance and medical image remote diagnosis among others. The company’s PCS software is patented technology which automatically and transparently migrates and replicates files among storage nodes to balance and optimize performance – without interruption in client access.

Parascale PCS

“With Charles River Ventures and Menlo Ventures, we have the two premier investors in the storage space supporting our company,” said Sajai Krishnan, Parascale CEO. “In the very specific technology domain where Parascale operates , clustered storage, Charles River’s success with EqualLogic has been the best clustered SAN-storage exit. Menlo’s investment in Spinnaker Networks has been arguably the best clustered NAS-storage exit. It is an honor to have Bruce Sachs of Charles River and John Jarve of Menlo on our board. Their voting with their wallets in leading the Series A round, is an affirmation of Parascale’s team, business model and opportunity.”

[Source: ByteandSwitch]

Hyperic Launches CloudStatus, Cloud Management Software Deluxe

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In an impressive effort to make the cloud more transparent, open source cloud management software vendor Hyperic has launched CloudStatus.com, a web service (in beta) that lets a user peek in on the various compute clouds to see how things are running.

CloudStatus

CloudStatus measures service availability, latency and throughput for cloud-based infrastructure and application services. The initial release provides metrics for Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (which runs on the Xen hypervisor), Simple Storage Service, SimpleDB, Simple Queue Service and Flexible Payment Service. Hyperic does so by sending a software agent to make requests against various cloud services, which obviously leads to a few questions about the viability of the service.

EC2

As Stacey Higginbotham puts it on GigaOm:

“It’s a decent idea, but my worry is that Amazon or another cloud provider could shut the service down, either by offering their own status service or by stopping the Hyperic agent. Given the rush to provide dashboards, application-testing products and other services on top of established computing services, I’m eager to see how startups keep their footing in the clouds.”

The Hyperic team also blogged about the release featuring a promotion video which we’re happy to share with you.

Breaking: Veeam Software Acquires nworks

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Veeam Software, known for virtualization management tools and its FastSCP file management freeware for VMware environments, has acquired nworks, a maker of “enterprise management connectors” that link VMware virtual infrastructure tools and enterprise systems management tools from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Veeam

nworks

“Our customers have been asking to manage their physical and virtual infrastructures through a single console, and many of them have significant investments in HP OpenView and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager,” says Ratmir Timashev, Veeam president and CEO (also see our video interview with him at the latest VMworld Europe).

Veeam’s new lineup of product offerings will include backup, reporting and monitoring tools as well as Veeam Configurator, which manages VMware configurations from a Windows interface; nworks Smart Plug-In for VMware for HP Software Operations Manager, which incorporates VMware management into HP OpenView; and nworks Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, which incorporates VMware management into Microsoft SCOM.