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

Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

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Red Hat has announced the general, worldwide availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the first update to the platform since the delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 in November 2010.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 enhancements provide customers with improvements in system reliability, scalability and performance, coupled with support for upcoming system hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also delivers patches and security updates, while maintaining application compatibility and OEM/ISV certifications.

In addition to performance improvements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also provides numerous technology updates, including:

– Additional configuration options for advanced storage configurations with improvements in FCoE, Datacenter Bridging and iSCSI offload, which allow networked storage to deliver the quality of service commonly associated with directly connected storage

– Enhancements in virtualization, file systems, scheduler, resource management and high availability

– New technologies that enable smoother enterprise deployments and tighter integration with heterogeneous systems

– A technology preview of Red Hat Enterprise Identity (IPA) services, based on the open source FreeIPA project

– Support for automatic failover for virtual machines and applications using the Red Hat High Availability Add-On

– Integrated developer tools that provide the ability to write, debug, profile and deploy applications without leaving the graphical environment

– Improvements to network traffic processing to leverage multi-processor servers that are getting increasingly common

Wyse Launches T50, A Linux-based Thin Client For Cloud Client Computing Deployments

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Wyse Technology has announced the Wyse T50 thin client, which delivers Web, Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware VDI user experience, all through a single, intuitive user interface.

Wyse T50 is powered by Wyse-enhanced Linux, delivering a simpler user interface and a “plug and display” start-up of less than 20 seconds. The ENERGY STAR Version 5.0, and EPEAT-compliant Wyse T50 thin client also creates a rich user experience displaying vibrant multimedia and Flash in VDI and the local browser.

The Wyse T50 also includes the same automatic configuration and management used in Wyse’s premium thin and zero clients, eliminating the need for manual utilities and wizards.

With Wyse T50, users have the DVI-I display option to connect to two monitors for optimum viewing versatility. Wyse T50 also includes networking capabilities, with gigabit Ethernet and optional integrated B/G/N Wi-Fi. Wyse T50 also supports the RDP7 protocol and offers such advanced features as Wyse Collaborative Processing Architecture media redirection and bitmap compression.

At the heart of the Wyse T50 lies the Marvell ARMADA PXA 510 application processor and an ARMv7 CPU running at 1GHz frequency.

The Wyse-enhanced Linux firmware is verified Citrix Ready for Citrix Receiver with HDX, and features certification with VMware View Open Client, and support for Wyse TCX and VDA.

RingCube Announces General Availability Of vDesk v4.0

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RingCube Technologies, provider of personalization solutions for virtual desktops, today announced the general availability of vDesk v 4.0, a new enterprise desktop virtualization solution that expands an organization’s VDI user base, enables faster and more efficient VDI rollouts, reduces VDI infrastructure costs, and increases VDI’s return on investment.

RingCube will publicly unveil vDesk v4.0 at the Citrix Synergy 2011 event in San Francisco next week.

RingCube’s vDesk is a complementary offering to VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop that offers personalized user desktops without adding any additional management overhead. It also supports virtualizing the entire desktop, including department-level and user-installed applications.

By broadening the VDI rollout to a larger percentage of employees, organizations lower the overall cost of their VDI projects and improve user productivity, which results in a higher return on investment. With vDesk v4.0, organizations can now realize the promised productivity and cost-saving benefits from their VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop investments.

vDesk for VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop is generally available today. Pricing starts at $95 per user.

Virtustream Teams Up With VMware To Run SAP Applications On The xStream Enterprise Cloud Platform

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Virtustream, a provider of cloud services and infrastructure solutions, today announced a partnership with VMware to demonstrate the viability and efficiency of running SAP applications in a secure, multi-tenanted enterprise cloud environment.

Through a new program offered by Virtustream, qualified SAP customers can test drive running their SAP applications on Virtustream’s enterprise cloud platform, xStream, with resources optimized by VMware vSphere.

SAP, Microsoft Team Up To Make App Development And Cloud Management Easier

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Expanding their long-term partnership with a joint base of thousands of customers, SAP and Microsoft today announced their plans to improve integration between SAP software and Microsoft virtualization and cloud computing technologies.

These plans include innovations to people-centric applications development for SAP software as well as virtualization and cloud computing without disruption of customer IT landscapes.

The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 15-18, 2011.

The parties plan to make business processes from SAP software more easily consumed and extended by .NET developers, simplifying the overall application development process. This level of access will help redefine the SAP/Microsoft developer landscape with shorter development cycles, lower costs and openness into core applications.

Microsoft and SAP are also planning to provide integration between upcoming landscape management software from SAP, Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V technology, bringing greater agility for cloud management and deployments.

NEC Corporation Signs Global OEM Agreement With Wyse

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Wyse today announced the signing of a worldwide multiyear OEM agreement with NEC Corporation, a provider of IT and network technologies. The agreement involves NEC’s VirtualPCCenter (VPCC), an end-to-end desktop cloud platform from NEC designed to bring stability to enterprise IT systems.

As part of the agreement, NEC will be offering its customers two advanced NEC-branded Wyse thin clients with Wyse’s WDM cloud client infrastructure management software, which were developed for and in collaboration with NEC.

The two thin client products are US300c and US110c.

Both solutions feature a separate graphic accelerator for satisfying performance and user experience and a low-power media system processor that delivers rich multimedia and video playback of up to HD resolution.

Model US300c offers support for Windows Embedded Standard (WES), the next generation of Windows Embedded offerings from Microsoft. It also includes the latest RDP, ICA and VMware View client support, enhanced security features, advanced multimedia technology support with a Microsoft Silverlight plug-in component that enables the next generation of media experiences, rich interactive applications for the Web on devices that run WES, and local execution of Silverlight and Windows Media Player 11.

Model US110c offers support for Windows CE, features fast start-up powered by a VIA ULV 1GHz processor, and boots in seconds. This model also provides secure user login to corporate networks.

NEC’s VirtualPCCenter operates in the same way as a traditional desktop PC, enabling the user to access typical desktop PC applications. Benefits to the user and IT include, improved back up and security of data, enforced endpoint security, and simplified software maintenance.