Virtualization.com

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

Virtela Gains New CEO, Debuts Open Acceleration Service For Public Clouds

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Virtela, the managed network, security and cloud services company, announced that B.V. Jagadeesh has joined as president and chief executive officer.

Prior to joining Virtela, Jagadeesh served as group vice president and general manager of Citrix Systems’ Application Networking Group after the company’s $325 million acquisition of NetScaler, where he served as president and CEO.

Jagadeesh previously co-founded Exodus Communications and was instrumental in leading its IPO. He serves as chairman of the board of NetMagic Solutions, a leading IT services company in India, and was a director of Ankeena (acquired by Juniper Networks) and Ocarina Networks (acquired by Dell).

In tandem with the appointment of Jagadeesh, Virtela introduced the Cloud Accelerator service, which extends Virtela ESC’s acceleration benefits to applications hosted within the public cloud environment, such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, and IBM Cloudburst.

ManageEngine Adds Hyper-V Support To Application Management Software

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ManageEngine, makers of a suite of network, systems, applications and security management software solutions, today announced support for monitoring Microsoft Hyper-V servers is now part of ManageEngine Applications Manager, the company’s server and application performance monitoring software.

ManageEngine started with VMware monitoring last year.

ManageEngine Applications Manager’s new monitoring capabilities help IT administrators gain insight into the health and performance of Hyper-V servers as well as the virtual machines configured in those servers. The software helps Operations teams troubleshoot problems quickly, reduce VM downtime and eliminate performance bottlenecks.

With the help of performance stats and in-depth reports, IT administrators can ensure their virtual systems are performing at optimum levels.

A 30-day fully functional trial edition of ManageEngine Applications Manager can be downloaded from the website. Pricing starts at $1,590 for the Professional Edition with the Hyper-V Monitor.

Virtualization And The Cloud: Comes With Major Backup and Recovery Challenges?

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Acronis, a provider of backup and recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today launched the Global Disaster Recovery Index, a (self-serving) barometer which measures IT managers’ confidence in their backup and recovery operations.

The survey of over 3,000 small and medium-sized businesses conducted by the Ponemon Institute revealed that while attitudes towards backup and recovery differ widely around the world, businesses everywhere want a single backup and recovery solution for physical, virtual and cloud environments.

The vast majority (68%) of IT managers agree that their greatest challenge in a hybrid environment is moving data between the three environments, yet the average business currently uses at least two or three separate backup solutions making disaster recovery more complicated.

On a global scale, U.S. small- and medium-sized companies fell short of the international average, ranking 10th overall for backup and DR readiness. Approximately a third of U.S. businesses reported having no backup and DR strategy in place, citing lack of budget and resources as the primary reasons.

Without these resources and technologies to fortify a DR strategy, more than half (62%) reported they were concerned about their ability to avoid substantial downtime in the event of a serious incident.

With only 40% saying they were confident in recovering quickly, and 38% believing their IT staffs were qualified to handle DR operations in response to an event or disaster. Overall, the findings revealed that the U.S. spent consistently less (10%) on backup and DR than other countries.

To create the Index, each country was ranked based on its average responses from 11 questions about their confidence in backup and DR readiness, capabilities and practices. Questions covered technology, resources, procedures and executive buy-in.

The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute across 13 countries in October 2010. Over 3,000 IT practitioners were surveyed in small- to mid-market organizations with no more than 1,000 seats.

Jeff Miller Jumps From IBM To Layer 7

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Former IBM exec Jeff Miller has joined Layer 7‘s executive management team as vice president of sales, the company announced this morning.

Layer 7 Technologies boasts a portfolio of SOA and cloud security products, essentially helping organizations secure and govern integrations that span the Internet and cloud.

Miller brings more than 15 years of sales and marketing experience to Layer 7, with expertise in building direct and indirect sales teams for technology companies where SOA, cloud and security have been the focal point.

Most recently, Jeff was a business unit executive at IBM responsible for DataPower, Cast Iron and SOA Appliances in North America. He was a vice president of sales for DataPower before its acquisition by IBM.

Previously, he held sales leadership positions at SOA, cloud and SaaS startups such as Actional and Grand Central Communications.

Says Paul Rochester, CEO of Layer 7 Technologies:

“Jeff has the breadth and depth of experience, coupled with specific domain expertise in Layer 7’s sweet spot, that makes him a perfect fit for taking our sales and market presence to a new level.

He joins the company following a blockbuster year that saw triple-digit growth, strong global customer acquisition and industry recognition of our innovative solutions. Jeff will strengthen our management team as we build on these successes.”

Bitzer Mobile Debuts New Mobile Virtualization Solution for Enterprises

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Bitzer Mobile, a software technology solution provider that simplifies enterprise application access on mobile devices, today announced the availability of the new Enterprise Virtualized Mobility solution, which isolates corporate data from personal data on employee-owned mobile devices and enables secure remote access of enterprise applications on the same devices using multi-platform native mobile apps.

At the heart of EVM is a “virtual container” that is deployed on mobile devices as a native app.

This virtual container is controlled by the IT personnel in an enterprise to deliver the right data and access to the right mobile employee on a device of his or her choosing. This addresses the demand of consumerization of the enterprise where an employee’s personal mobile device is often used to access corporate data and decision making information.

Bitzer Enterprise Virtual App Containers (EVC) are free to download for development and available today from the iPhone App store, Android Market and BlackBerry App World.

Customer branded EVC user licenses with administrator control panel start at $5,000 per year for fifty users with discounts for larger user licenses. MVL development is open and free for use by do-it-yourself IT departments, system integrators and independent developers.

AppSense Recruits Virtualization Guru Dr. Benny Tritsch

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AppSense, provider of user virtualization solutions for enterprises, has hired Dr Benny Tritsch as technology director in Germany, Austria & Switzerland. Tritsch will also be a contributor to the AppSense Office of the CTO, based in San Jose, and also educate the market on user virtualization the company says.

Tritsch will also continue his independent community work, running training sessions and speaking at regular industry events on desktop, application delivery and user virtualization technologies.

Dr Tritsch is based near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University in Darmstadt, a MSc in Physics from the University in Freiburg after completing his thesis at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and a BSc in Physics from the University in Freiburg.

Tritsch comments:

“Consumerisation of services and devices, componentized desktops, user driven service delivery models, including cloud and outsourcing, and massive desktop migration are driving the need for user virtualisation. The desktop of the future will look very different from today, comprising standardized components, user installed applications and user data, made available across all platforms, delivery mechanisms and devices.

That is the AppSense vision, and I’m genuinely excited about the company’s potential as they continue to drive this expanding user virtualization market.”

AppSense recently announced 1.5 million license sales for 2010, a 60 percent increase in revenues and 43 per cent increase in headcount. This expansion has also seen investment into new EMEA locations, with the opening of new offices in Paris and Oslo.

The company also developed existing and new partnerships with Citrix, McAfee, Microsoft and VMware, and worked with a number of system integrators such as Dell, HP, IBM and CSC.