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VMware Set To Release ThinApp 4.0 In 30 Days

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VMware yesterday announced the upcoming availability of VMware ThinApp 4, an application virtualization solution based on technology the company acquired to its takeover of Thinstall and with it their Application Virtualization Suite.

VMware

ThinApp requires no pre-installed software on physical or virtual PCs and no new deployment infrastructure or management tools. ThinApp packages applications in familiar formats (.MSI or .EXE) that can plug into existing infrastructure for software license management, deployment, audit and compliance.

According to the press release, VMware ThinApp 4.0 highlights include:

  • Application Link (NEW) – Application Link allows interdependent applications to communicate with one another (such as Java, .Net, IE, Office) to eliminate conflicts, reduce application size, and maintain continuity and tracking of software licenses.
  • Application Sync (NEW) – Application Sync streams byte-level updates to users’ critical applications inside and outside the enterprise using HTTP/HTTPS, and on managed and non-managed PCs running virtualized applications.
  • “Package once, deploy anywhere” ThinApp uses Thinstall technology, which pioneered agentless application virtualization allowing applications to be deployed on virtually any Windows OS across virtually any device (kiosks, PCs, laptops, thin clients, virtual desktops).
  • Works with existing management tools to streamline costs and maintain compliance. ThinApp plugs into existing processes and desktop management tools to reduce the costs and complexity around managing the physical and virtual desktop.  According to Gartner**, “Virtualized applications can reduce the cost of testing, packaging and supporting an application by 60%.”
  • Conflict-free applications eliminate risks to business continuity. Applications are isolated from the underlying OS, eliminating costs of conflicting resources and allowing different versions of an application to run side by side (such as different versions of Internet Explorer).
  • Regain control of the desktop. ThinApp, along with VMware’s desktop virtualization family of products (ACE, Fusion, Workstation, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) enables IT to segment their applications, operating systems and migration deployments to speed time to value while decreasing complexity of managing the desktop.

The VMware ThinApp offering, which includes a copy of VMware Workstation and 50 client licenses, is priced at $5,000.  The client licenses are priced at $39 per endpoint. ThinApp will be available for purchase within 30 days through VMware’s network of distributors, resellers and OEMs.

Jeff Woolsey and Scott Lowe Discuss Hyper-V

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IT pro and virtualization expert Scott Lowe had an interesting discussion with Jeff Woolsey, Senior Program Manager for Hyper-V at Microsoft. Scott posted a summary of their conversation on his blog, here’s an excerpt:

What are the key architectural advantages of Hyper-V as compared to Xen or ESX?

Jeff indicated that Hyper-V and Xen are architecturally very similar. Both use a privileged VM; Microsoft calls it the parent partition, Xen calls it dom0. In both cases, I/O is routed through this privileged partition and only the privileged partition has access to the physical hardware. Microsoft believes the hypervisor should be as thin as possible; Hyper-V is only about 600K worth of code. The networking stack and the storage stack are pushed up into the parent partition to keep drivers out of the hypervisor. Jeff referred me back to his session earlier in the day, where he discussed the need for the parent partition (my summary of that session is here). ESX puts all the drivers in the hypervisor, which means that they have a harder time providing support for new hardware (the example given was 4Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs vs. 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs). In talking about the placement of device drivers, our discussion naturally led us to the next question.

How would you respond to the concerns about the quality of the device drivers in the parent partition affecting the stability of the hypervisor?

Jeff doesn’t buy into this argument. Unlike desktops or workstations, administrators don’t typically go willy-nilly with drivers on production servers. Drivers are generally provided by the hardware vendors. In addition, because Hyper-V requires the x64 edition of Windows Server 2008, this is even less of an issue; it’s impossible to use unsigned drivers with x64 Windows. This means that any driver that can be used with Hyper-V will be WHQL-tested. Supposedly, this will keep out potentially faulty device drivers. Jeff pointed to the exclusive use of Hyper-V to power the MSDN and TechNet web sites at Microsoft as proof. I can see his point, but I still have to wonder if another level of qualification and validation shouldn’t have been established to ensure that everything works as expected with Hyper-V. It still seems possible to me that organizations stepping outside the “Big 3? server vendors—Dell, HP, and IBM—could run into issues.

Read the rest (3 more questions) here.

VMware Stock Drops As Employee Grants Expire

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On a generally down day for tech stocks, VMware slipped on news that a large number of employee share grants may begin trading this week. The stock was down $4.19, or 6.2 %, to $63.70 in recent trading, or 61 times 2008 earnings and 43 times 2009 earnings. The Nasdaq was off 0.8 %.

Some 51.2 million shares of VMware are currently traded. According to UBS analyst Heather Bellini, about 11 million shares, or 22 % of the float, will become eligible to trade this week, as one-year grants to employees begin to vest. Another 3.5 million shares will vest in each of the next two quarters.

VMware has clawed its way back from a March low of $41.41 since posting first-quarter earnings in April that reported a still healthy revenue growth of 69 %. But the stock is well below its October high of $125, when year-over-year revenue growth was nearly 90 %.

VMware issued 33 million shares at $29 a share in an IPO.

Also check our earlier post on VMware financials.

[Source: TheStreet]

Citrix Integrates Access Gateway 1.8 With XenDesktop

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Citrix has integrated its Access Gateway appliance, version 1.8 with its recently released XenDesktop virtual desktop solution. Citrix’ security solution will allow companies to deliver virtual desktops to users based on identity, location and security status.

Citrix said its SmartAccess technology, when applied to its VDI solution, will allow customers to deploy virtual desktops more quickly and more securely to users worldwide. Additionally, the gateway’s wizards have been extended to support XenDesktop. The configuration wizards now enable IS managers to automate common XenDesktop configuration tasks.

The 8.1 release of Citrix Access Gateway costs about $3500 and includes end user licenses for XenDesktop use.

[Source: ZDnet Blogs]

INX Buys VMware Virtualization Consulting Organization AccessFlow

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INX yesterday announced that it has acquired the operations of AccessFlow, a consulting organization focused on delivering VMware-based virtualization solutions.

INX

AccessFlow

AccessFlow is an award winning VMware Premier & Gold Certified VAC Partner and is one of the first VMware partners experienced in VMware’s new Site Recovery Manager product, expected to be available later this year. The company currently has 30 employees of which 17 are solutions engineers.

The acquisition closed on June 6, 2008, and was structured as a purchase of the ongoing operations of AccessFlow by INX. INX expects the transaction to be accretive to per-share earnings for the 12-month period following the transaction.

VMware’s x86 Virtualization Benchmark Tool VMmark Upgraded To Version 1.1

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VMmark, VMware‘s free tool that hardware vendors, virtualization software vendors and other organizations can use to measure the performance and scalability of applications running in virtualized environments, has just reached version 1.1.

You can download it here and/or check the release notes over here.

[Source: VMware Blogs]