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

Parallels Unveils New Cloud Infrastructure and Hosted PBX solutions

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Hosting and Cloud service enablement company Parallels recently announced new Cloud Infrastructure and Hosted PBX solutions, as well as support for Microsoft Office 365 Syndication and Hyper-V Cloud. It is also increasing its investment in facilitating APS-enabled solutions.

Parallels is launching and supporting:

– Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure
– Hosted PBX
– Microsoft System Center Hyper-V Cloud
– Microsoft Office 365 Syndication
– Increased Investment in the APS Program

More information is available here.

ManageEngine Releases Applications Manager 9.5

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ManageEngine, makers of a suite of network, systems, applications and security management software solutions, today announced automated provisioning of virtual resources is now possible with ManageEngine’s Applications Manager, the company’s server and application performance monitoring software.

The new enhancements to Applications Manager’s virtualization monitoring capabilities enable IT administrators to automate the provisioning of virtual resources, automatically making adjustments when threshold levels are breached.

For example, Applications Manager will automatically add, start or stop virtual machines in a VMware ESX/ESXi server farm when the number of active sessions in a server exceed the specified threshold.

With this automation capability, the IT team may improve operational efficiency by reducing manual intervention, as well as optimize resource utilization by reusing inactive virtual resources.

ManageEngine Applications Manager, with the latest virtualization management capabilities, is available now.

Pricing starts at $795 for the Professional Edition for up to 25 servers or applications.

ConteXtream Adds Industry Vet Joel Brand As VP of Marketing

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ConteXtream, which providers network operators with grid networking solutions that transform and modernize their networks by virtualizing and globalizing service delivery, today announced it has expanded its executive team, adding industry veteran Joel Brand as vice president of marketing.

Brand was previously vice president of product management and marketing at Bytemobile.

Brand was instrumental in delivering to market Bytemobile’s video optimization solution, which was successfully deployed by large operators around the world, including T-Mobile and the Vodafone groups.

Prior to his tenure at Bytemobile, Brand was with Ruckus Wireless, where he was responsible for the service provider business, which brought to market carrier-grade WiFi offload solutions—particularly for HD Video applications.

AppSense Raises Its First Round Of Funding: $70 Million From Goldman Sachs

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User virtualization specialist AppSense has raised $70 million from Goldman Sachs (via TechCrunch).

User virtualization solves many of the complex technical issues around delivering a consistent environment in any environment (e.g. working from home, buying your own computer) and across any device including smartphones, iPads and other tablets.

From an enterprise perspective, it also allows IT to reduce the cost of maintenance and major upgrades, such as Windows 7 migration, reduce the time it takes users to log on and speed up the delivery of applications regardless of whether they are locally stored or cloud-based.

The software also enables them to retain control from a security perspective, without restricting the user by imposing a “lockdown” policy.

AppSense says it is already profitable and growing rapidly. Last year its turnover was $47 million, a 60% increase on the previous year.

In 2010, AppSense signed up more than 4,000 enterprise and government customers around the world, including major companies like BT, ESPN, JPMorgan Chase and United Airlines.

Last year, AppSense says it sold some 1.5 million user licenses, comprising a partnership with Fujitsu to provide desktop management solutions to the Department for Work and Pensions for more than 1,000 locations and over 140,000 users in the UK.

Flexera Releases AdminStudio Suite 10

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Flexera Software, provider of strategic Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and their customers, today announced the launch of AdminStudio Suite 10.

The new release is a comprehensive Application Readiness solution enabling organizations to strategically manage application packaging and remediation across their entire software estate, mitigating Windows 7 and application virtualization migration risks.

With as many as 35% of an enterprise’s applications requiring updates in any given year, coupled with the explosive growth in Windows 7 migrations and virtualization initiatives, compatibility assessment, remediation and packaging processes are now of strategic importance to IT organizations.

AdminStudio delivers application packaging efficiencies as much as nine times greater compared to manual efforts.

AdminStudio 10 lets users centrally manage and report on the virtual and traditional application portfolio for an overall view of the application estate’s readiness for each format.

A new, unified “application-centric” application catalog manages all deployment types for an application, enabling all packages, including virtual packages, to be handled with the same process and tools as those used for MSIs, eliminating the cost and complexity of having multiple solutions and repositories.

Moreover, AdminStudio 10 is now powered by the latest version of the world’s leading MSI authoring and editing tool, InstallShield 2011, giving users complete flexibility in editing packages using the same installation preparation tool relied on by more than 71,000 ISVs worldwide.

Today’s launch also includes enhancements to AdminStudio Virtualization Pack, which prepares reliable virtual applications for deployment with a complete set of suitability testing, automated conversion, validation, editing and management reporting capabilities.

Enhanced validation and conflict testing of Microsoft App-V packages supports packagers in managing both MSI and App-V with the same tool and processes to ensure a consistent, unified approach.

Packagers can also directly edit App-V packages, saving significant time and effort by eliminating the need to re-convert from an MSI when a change to an App-V package is required.

Cloud Computing Expert Scott Bils Joins Everest Group As Partner

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Everest Group, an advisory firm on global services, has appointed Scott Bils as partner.

Prior to joining Everest, Scott was the founding CEO at Conformity, a venture-backed provider of on-demand cloud identity and SaaS management solutions. Bils led and closed multiple seed stage and institutional funding rounds; developed partnerships with leading SaaS and cloud identity ecosystem vendors and created the Enterprise SaaS Working Group.

Bils will play a leading role in developing Everest’s Next Generation IT practice, which will support the needs of service providers, infrastructure vendors, and enterprises as they seek to address the challenges and opportunities of innovative yet disruptive technologies including the cloud (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS), virtualization, and mobile computing.

Scott holds a MBA from the University of Chicago and earned an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.