Virtualization.com – Page 364 – News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Microsoft Betting Big on Virtualization; Acquires Calista Technologies. Citrix Up Next?

January 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Microsoft plans to announce today what it calls a companywide strategy to accelerate broad adoption of virtualization by its customers. As part of the its new approach, the Redmond-based software giant unveiled a suite of services aimed at reducing the number of servers businesses need to use, separating applications from operating systems, reducing costs and lowering carbon emissions.

Microsoft announced that it competed acquisition of Calista Technologies , a California-based startup that makes computer graphics for virtualized computers, and an expanded partnership with Citrix Systems, a VMware competitor based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Microsoft and Citrix will jointly market services that virtualize computers, operating systems and applications.

Microsoft wouldn’t disclose how much it paid for Calista, but Roger Kay, President of technology research firm Endpoint Technologies Associates, speculates that the price tag was likely south of $100 million. He also says Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Citrix. “Citrix, on its own, has a small market share,” Kay says. “VMware was cleaning its clock.” A Microsoft-Citrix combination could present formidable competition to VMware, he suggests. Buying Citrix, however, would be a significant deal: The company has a market cap of $6.4 billion.

[Source: Forbes ]

Xkoto Going for Continuous Database Availability Through Virtualization

January 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Derrick Harris over at GRIDToday writes about Toronto-based startup Xkoto (a transliteration of two Greek words which taken together convey the idea of “out of darkness, out of chaos”), a database load balancing provider and their flagship product Gridscale . In essence, Gridscale is a middleware appliance that sits between the application and the database and allows for multiple active copies of the database to run simultaneously, as opposed to traditional high availability or disaster recovery solutions that normally run in an active-passive model.

Read the article .

PortableApps Following In Thinstall’s Acquisition Footsteps?

January 19, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Joe Foran is speculating a future acquisition of application virtualization provider PortableApps on the Server Virtualization Blog .

“There are, of course, differences, but the overall business models are very similar. PA is an open-source outfit, which makes them a bit more transparent than Thinstall, which has a mix of OSS and proprietary products. Since PA is purely open source, and relies a lot on the community to deliver portable-ized apps, their list of of programs is smaller and limited to open source and other freely-licensed software. Still, with the recent focus on OSS in the enterprise, one can’t help but see the value of a PortableApps version of OpenOffice sitting on a Citrix Server for thin-client and virtual desktop users to access.”

The virtualization space is continuously heating up, and no doubt we will see more acquisitions of these types of technology providers in 2008, but will PortableApps really be the next one? Time will tell.

Endeavors Partnering Up With Several US Companies

January 18, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Endeavors Technologies , an application streaming and virtualisation technology provider and its UK-based parent company, Tadpole Technology , have announced a new multi-level partner programme with Blackhawk Technology Consulting , Client-Server Technology Group , and NTAKT7 in the Americas region.

Endeavors develops technologies that enable servers to stream PC-based applications to client computers for execution. Application virtualisation and streaming enables organisations to reduce the total cost of ownership by improving service levels, simplifying the management of computers and improving security and reliability. The company provides its services through licensing, royalty, and technology transfer models.

According to Endeavors, the partner companies will participate at four levels: reseller partners, consulting partners, accredited partners and premier partners.

Reseller partners are service providers, value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators that sell Endeavors’s products.

Consulting partners offer products or services that complement Endeavors’s application virtualisation and streaming products and accredited partners are managed service providers, VARs and systems integrators that sell the company’s products and also provide basic, first line technical support.

Premier partners are national or international managed service providers, VARs and system integrators with technical expertise to provide in-depth technical support for the products of Endeavors that they sell.

Peter Bondar, CEO, Endeavors Technologies, said: “Partners form a strategic component of our expansion plans; harnessing their expertise and relationships allows us to leverage our sales resources and engage with a broader set of potential customers, sooner. We are particularly pleased to have attracted partners with considerable expertise in other application virtualisation products.”

Endeavors claims that its partners will reap benefits from joint marketing activities, sales leads, training, technical support and other resources.

Bondar claimed that the company’s partners have shown interest in using its products in enterprise application virtualisation deployments. The products are also useful to partners who offer their software as software as a service (SaaS) model. Application Jukebox, Endeavors’s application streaming and virtualisation product suite, includes both enterprise and SaaS versions. He added that the company was concentrating on developing its distribution channels and strategy.

[Via ]

Patch Management Coming to a Citrix XenServer Near You

January 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Roger Klorese , Product Marketing Manager for Citrix XenServer , wrote a blog post revealing a major upcoming new feature in XenServer: pool-wide Patch Management.

“XenServer has had a relatively small number of patches, and in the case of security advisories, we’ve been consistently able to announce the fix for an issue very quickly, or in one case, even before the vulnerability was publicized.

But it’s true that virtual platforms can add complexity to patch management. While other Citrix technologies — Provisioning Server, for instance — can reduce the impact of patching significantly, the maintenance of the virtualization server platform itself is an major concern.

We don’t talk about future features very often, but here’s one area of the next release of Citrix XenServer — which is in closed beta with Citrix employees and partners now — that is worth crowing about.”

In conjunction with a wizard in XenCenter, there will be a possibility for you to:

* Check the Citrix XenServer website for updates
* Download any pending updates to your XenCenter system
* Choose which servers in your managed pools you wish to apply the patches to
* Put each server in maintenance mode (with their VMs kept online on another server via XenMotion)
* Apply the patches
* Bring the server back online and move VMs back to it automatically

No word on timing for the public beta.

Hat tip to Tarry Singh .

Combell Group Chooses SWsoft For Its Virtual Server Hosting Plans

January 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Virtualization software company SWsoft is powering a new line of virtual server hosting service plans by the Belgian hosting company Combell Group .

Frederik Poelman, CTO at Combell, noted, ”With SWsoft Virtuozzo, our new virtual server offering delivers exceptional performance and results, and allows our customers the flexibility to work how they want to work. Virtuozzo’s server density ratio, performance response rates, and streamlined administrative management tools allow us to easily manage large numbers of virtual environments without affecting the customer experience.”
Virtuozzo partitions a physical server into multiple, isolated containers to provide customers with an economical alternative to dedicated servers. Combell’s new offering gives customers control over their own virtual environment through root access and empowers them to perform application installation, backup and reboot processes.

Combell’s services are built on a deep commitment to quality and innovation. As the only Belgian hosting company to achieve ISO 9001:2000 certification and an early adopter of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model, Combell keeps the customer at the center of its decision-making. Security, customer issue rates and ease of use were key criteria for selecting Virtuozzo to fuel its virtual server offerings.

Nils Hueneke, Hosting Europe, SWsoft added, ”We are pleased that Combell has selected Virtuozzo to power its new virtual sever offering. Combell and its customers will benefit from our ongoing Open Fusion technology initiative to advance an open platform for hosting, as well as a commitment to quality and innovation that matches their own.”