Virtualization.com

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

Tool Tip: Virtualization ROI Calculation Tool

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“The Microsoft Integrated Virtualization Business Value Analyst was developed independently by ex-Gartner TCO/ROI experts at leading ROI tool developer Alinean, Inc. This analysis tool helps customers examine current server, development/qa lab, desktop and application virtualization opportunities, quantifying the potential savings, service level and agility benefits, investment and ROI for implementing Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions.

The tool collects specific information about current infrastructure costs and opportunities for improvement, then uses research by Alinean to project potential costs and benefits for various optimization strategies using the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions. All research was collected from actual Microsoft customers and reflects typical costs and savings for similar company type and size. All information is kept confidential and private.”

[Source: The Active Network]

Dell Reportedly Plans To Give Away VMware ESX Server 3i For Free, World Keeps Turning

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According to The Inquirer, it appears Dell is considering to stop charging VMware ESX Server 3i licensing fees on its PowerEdge servers to its customers. This was reportedly said by VMWare’s Senior Product Marketing Manager Martin Niemer and comes two weeks after the virtualization vendor announced it would start embedding the 32 MB hypervisor across Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM servers.

This doesn’t come as a big surprise, as VMware had added to the previous announcement that hardware vendors would be able to choose which premium they would charge to end customers, if any.  Expect the other hardware vendors to follow suit and drop the prices for including the hypervisors significantly (or even zero) if Dell comes through, especially with the sharp-priced Microsoft hypervisor Hyper-V on its way.

But don’t expect this to have a serious impact on the whole VMware reseller channel’s bottom line, as some blogs are proclaiming already.  The real money is in the enterprise offering and upgrades anyway, and the smaller distributors and resellers have other advantages when it comes to SMB offerings besides pricing.

VMworld Europe 2008 in Video

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At this year’s VMworld Europe in Cannes (France), Virtualization.com went wild and recorded dozens of videos featuring marketing, technical & product managers, executives, company founders and analysts from the virtualization industry. To recap of what our insomniac bloggers Tarry Singh and Nicolas ‘ Charbax‘ Charbonnier have been up to in Cannes, we’ve made a dedicated page with an overview of all the video interviews and booth tours.

Check out VMWorld Europe 2008 in Video

Enjoy!

Parallels Packages Virtuozzo Containers 4 Software With Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

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Parallels (formerly SWsoft) today announced availability of its Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 server virtualization software packaged with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell. This provides customers with another choice for virtualization, which can effectively handle performance-sensitive workloads such as databases as well as support for servers using Itanium processors.

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Parallels uses the standard distribution of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, an interoperable open platform for mission-critical computing, and adds its recently released version of virtualization software to deliver an integrated solution to customers.

From the press release:

“Customers can improve server utilization rates and realize the manageability benefits of containers-based virtualization in combination with one of the most popular enterprise-class Linux distributions in the world,” said Kurt Daniel, senior vice president of marketing and online, Parallels. “Importantly, we’re giving customers one place to turn for support with this integrated virtualization solution.”

“Novell remains committed to providing a variety of virtualization choices,” said Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for SUSE Linux Enterprise. “We view this solution as an opportunity to expand our customer base for SUSE Linux Enterprise.”

Website Tip: VM4All.com

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A small pointer to an online resource you may find to be very useful: courtesy of Eric Sloof from The Netherlands, you can browse a complete repository of VMware tools at VM4All.com, including their licensing terms, description, creator credits and link to download / maker.

From the about page:

VMware’s virtualization technology has become the industry standard for virtualization in the enterprise. More and more people are writing software based on the SDK and created a lot of little handy tools. On the other side there are some larger company’s who also created all kinds of applications to support VMware ESX server and Virtual Center. The vm4all.com website provides a complete list of all these tools and applications.

Industry Analyst Tony Asaro Joins Virtual Iron As Chief Strategy Officer

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Virtual Iron today announced the hiring of former Enterprise Strategy Group senior analyst and consultant Tony Asaro as Chief Strategy Officer. In his role, Asaro will focus on business strategy, ecosystem development, evangelism and education of Virtual Iron to the market and complement the company’s worldwide go-to-market efforts.

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Earlier this year, Virtual Iron raised $ 20 million in private equity financing. Also check out our video interview with Mike Grandinetti, VP & Chief Marketing Officer with the company.

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Asaro has been in the high tech industry for 22 years in a wide range of roles including sales, systems engineering, business development, marketing and as an entrepreneur. Most recently, he was with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading industry analyst and consulting firm. During his tenure there, Asaro was a trusted adviser to many established and emerging infrastructure vendors including EMC, NetApp, and VMware to name just a few. He provided strategic guidance and consulting on product direction, positioning, and business development and is considered a thought leader on IT infrastructure, data center environments, storage systems and networks, virtualization, power and cooling issues, and disaster recovery solutions.

“Tony Asaro is a great addition to the Virtual Iron team as we continue to expand our presence in the fast-growing server virtualization market,” said Ed Walsh, president and CEO of Virtual Iron. “We will leverage Tony’s deep experience and abilities to sharpen our business, marketing and product strategies and continue to increase our visibility across our user, partner and channel communities.”

“Implementing server virtualization is one of the highest priorities in IT regardless of size, industry or region in the world,” said Tony Asaro. “Virtual Iron has a field-proven solution that our customers find is easy to use, cost effective and provides them all of the advanced management capabilities needed for a true server virtualization environment. Virtual Iron will continue to focus on raising its visibility to this wide audience so they know they have a choice – one that has been validated by over 1,500 end users just like them.”

[Source: VMBlog]