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

Leostream Picks Up Series A Funding To The Tune Of $3 Million

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Waltham, Mass.-based hosted desktop connection broker Leostream, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Meakem Becker Venture Capital, reports Private Equity Hub, citing a regulatory filing.

Leostream

CEO Mike Palin said the company plans to release details on the financing in coming weeks. Palin is the former CFO of Sitara Networks Inc., a Waltham, MA-based quality-of-service software developer.

Leostream was founded in 2002 by David Crosbie, who is now listed as the company’s CTO. He had previously founded Adero and Bluesocket, a wireless networking firm in Burlington. In 2001, COLT Telecom Group acquired Adero for an undisclosed amount.

Over the years, Leostream has evolved from basic virtualization management to Connection Brokering for both physical and virtual machines. The company boasts a high number of quality partnerships with companies like HP, Intel, Citrix and Microsoft, among others.

VMware Releases Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

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VMware has announced VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, the first beta of the second iteration of their virtualization product for the Mac.

The video below gives you a tour of Fusion 2.0 Beta 1’s top new features, including:

  • Multiple monitor support (up to 10 displays!)
  • Improved networking and printing
  • Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 (this is experimental, and it might not work on your Mac)
  • A refined UI for settings and VM management

There are more videos available on the product page.

Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 is available now, and the upgrade to the future version 2.0 will be free to all Fusion users.

ClearCube Spins Off Software Activities Into A New Company, VDIworks

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ClearCube today announced that its software business is being spun-off and launched as an independent new company called VDIworks. ClearCube will continue to provide solutions for centralized desktop computing, including end-to-end desktop virtualization, while VDIworks will focus on software management platforms for creating, deploying and managing virtual desktop infrastructure. As independent companies, ClearCube and VDIworks intend to maximize their business potential and gain the flexibility to meet the demands of their respective target markets.

ClearCube

VDIworks

VDIworks and ClearCube have signed an OEM agreement whereby ClearCube will continue to market and promote the VDIworks software under the current Sentral VDI Management Software brand. The Sentral management software will continue to be an integrated component of ClearCube’s complete centralized desktop computing solutions. ClearCube customers will continue to be supported in their current license agreements with ClearCube. VDIworks will establish additional OEM relationships with third-party solutions vendors so they can deploy virtual desktop solutions to their customers.

VDIworks will target the emerging market of desktop virtualization. The new company has received seed funding from current ClearCube investors and will be seeking additional funding to support its “rapid growth and high market demand”.

“ClearCube and VDIworks provide solutions within growth markets, and ClearCube’s investors recognized this and decided separating the technologies would allow each entity to fully capitalize on the market opportunities,” said Rick Hoffman, former president of ClearCube and now president of VDIworks. “Both companies immediately offer mature products and can point to successful customer installations. Both companies benefit from established internal development and sales teams. As a result, both companies present superior solutions that can provide rapid return on investment while improving enterprise security and IT management capabilities.”

ClearCube also announced today that former COO Randy Printz has been promoted to president and chief executive officer. His team includes Doug Layne, worldwide vice president of sales and marketing, and Jeana Thomas, senior director of alliances and channels.

In other news, ClearCube has issued a second press release touting its “record growth in 2007 and exceptional financial performance in Q1 of 2008”. ClearCube achieved 38 percent business growth in the second half over the first half of 2007, and 34 percent increase in net revenue in Q1 of 2008 over Q1 of 2007.

SunGard Leverages Virtualization For Disaster Recovery, Teams Up With VMware

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SunGard Availability Services today announced a partnership with VMware, leveraging its virtualization technology to create a suite of simple, fully-managed AdvancedRecovery services, including managed virtual recovery services. The offering is expected to be available later this year.

SunGard

“VMware’s virtualization platform is transforming disaster recovery by helping companies to protect a wide range of applications and data,” said Frank Casey, vice president of product strategy for SunGard. “We are working with VMware to create a faster, centralized and automated information availability service to help organizations of all sizes that need to protect both virtual and traditional IT environments. It is the next stage of SunGard’s commitment to delivering AvancedRecovery solutions to companies with varying IT infrastructure needs, and we are tapping the best minds and technologies in the industry to make this happen.”

Sungard Availability Services operates more than 3 million square feet of hardened facilities. Sungard Availability services range from 48-hour disaster recovery hot-sites to always-on, high-availability infrastructure and electronic vaulting services. It has more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world’s 50 largest financial services companies.

[Source: Data Center Knowledge]

VirtualLogix Introduces VLX vHA, Aims To Lead In High-Availability Assurance For Virtualized Environments

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VirtualLogix today released VLX vHA, which it claims is the industry’s first solution that enables high-availability (HA) assurances for communications equipment utilizing virtualization. VLX vHA comes integrated with VLX for Network Infrastructure and aims to increase system availability without the cost and scalability restrictions of traditional solutions.

VirtualLogix

“There are growing requirements to increase the up-time of all types of communications equipment in today’s competitive environment. Yet traditionally, high-availability techniques have been mostly applied in high-end core networks due to complexity and hardware cost,” said Mark Milligan, Vice President of Marketing at VirtualLogix. “Now, VLX vHA enables our customers to take full advantage of high availability combined with virtualization. Built on an open architecture supporting standard Service Availability Forum interfaces, VLX vHA also provides a viable option for organizations looking to utilize their existing high-availability software in the new, virtualized, multicore environment.”

VLX vHA offers fault recovery and system management services across virtual and physical domains, allowing companies to increase the availability of communications equipment and other critical embedded systems. vHA also offers scalability with wide range capabilities from hardware and guest OS management to the restart of applications from a known state. This allows the introduction of the appropriate level of availability based on system requirements.

VLX vHA is available as an option with VLX for Network Infrastructure real-time virtualization software.

[Source: LinuxDevices]

Parallels Desktop for Mac To Be Part Of Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription

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Last week, Parallels announced that its Parallels Desktop for Mac software will be made available as part of the Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription. The company claims this will enable millions of designers using Mac computers to use Microsoft’s Expression Studio to design desktop and web-based graphical interfaces.

“Including Parallels Desktop for Mac in the Microsoft Expression Subscription gives designers a valuable tool for working across platforms,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “It is further evidence of the productivity benefits that our virtualization software offers customers, and strengthens our ongoing partnership with Microsoft.”

The Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription is will be available from Microsoft in June 2008 and will cost $999 ERP.

In addition to the Parallels Desktop for Mac software, the Expression Professional Subscription includes:

  • Expression Studio
  • Visual Studio 2008 Standard
  • Office 2007 Standard
  • Windows XP SP2
  • Windows Vista Business Edition
  • Pre-configured virtualized server environments

For additional information, you’re invited to visit www.microsoft.com/expression.

[Source: VMBlog]