Virtualization.com

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

UC4 Software Appoints Industry Vet Jason Liu As Its New CEO

by Leave a Comment

UC4 Software, a provider of Intelligent Service Automation and IT process optimization solutions, today announced its board of directors has appointed Jason Liu as UC4’s chief executive officer, effective immediately.

Liu was most recently president and CEO of Univa UD, a recognized leader in cloud systems management software.

His technology and management experience includes serving as CEO of Callisto Software, a mobile systems management company acquired by Novell, and as CEO of Intrinsic Technologies, a Microsoft infrastructure software and services provider. Liu also previously served as CFO and senior vice president of Corporate Services for Ravisent Technologies.

While at Ravisent, Liu led the company through multiple acquisitions and spearheaded an IPO that brought the company to a $1 billion market value.

Liu also currently serves on the boards of Anysource, a digital media software provider, and Ecologic Technologies, a clean technology company in the green building materials market. He holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Washington University.

Vizioncore vConverter Now Supports Both Hyper-V And VMware Environments

by Leave a Comment

Vizioncore , a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Software, today announced the availability of a new version of vConverter , enabling virtual-to-physical, virtual-to-virtual and physical-to-virtual server conversions. vConverter now supports Microsoft Hyper-V systems in addition to VMware environments.

vConverter now enables the conversion of physical systems into an image file on virtual servers within either Hyper-V or VMware environments as well as within mixed environments. Administrators can also convert virtual machines between VMware and Hyper-V systems.

The new virtual-to-physical recovery capability allows administrators to restore virtual images onto physical systems. This means that physical systems can be converted, protected, replicated and recovered on virtual systems with the option to recover the images back to physical systems.

vConverter Features:

  • Converts physical systems into virtual machines (VM) quickly and easily
  • Converts VM images between VMware and Hyper-V platforms
  • Recovers physical systems from virtual machine images
  • Enables physical systems to be converted, protected, replicated and recovered on virtual systems and physical systems
  • Applies image-based data protection to physical systems
  • Unifies protection and recovery of physical and virtual systems
  • Leverages virtual infrastructures for physical data protection
  • Allows for the flexible adoption of strategies for virtual servers
  • Facilitates trouble-shooting of physical systems with virtual infrastructure

This new version of vConverter is being offered with a free 90-day trial key, after which a full version can be purchased for $299 per physical system.

Compushare Opens ‘Virtual Hot Site’ To Boost Disaster Recovery Solution

by Leave a Comment

Compushare announced today that they have opened a data center in Chicago to enhance their Critical Systems Recovery solution. This disaster recovery solution provides rapid failover, backup and full “point in time” restoration of servers in 60 minutes or less. It will be considered a hot site for organizations and institutions across the country.

Compushare will now be able to host a secondary appliance at this highly secure facility that will allow for nightly replication of server images through virtualization. In the event of a declared disaster, Compushare can now recover critical servers to a virtual server and provide secure connectivity via the Internet from an alternate site of choice.

This new feature will  benefit financial organizations with only a single location or multiple offices in close proximity to each other who would have a higher probability of a local or regional disaster impacting their entire company’s ability to continue to conduct business

EMC To Buy Data Warehousing And Analytics Company Greenplum With Cash

by Leave a Comment

EMC today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire California-based Greenplum,  a privately-held, fast-growing provider of disruptive data warehousing technology, a key enabler of “big data” clouds and self-service analytics.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Greenplum will form the foundation of a new data computing product division within EMC’s Information Infrastructure business.
Greenplum utilizes a “shared-nothing” massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture that has been designed from the ground up for analytical processing using virtualized x86 infrastructure. Greenplum is capable of delivering 10 to 100 times the performance of traditional database software at a dramatically lower cost. Data-driven businesses around the world, including NASDAQ OMX, NYSE Euronext, Skype, Equifax, T-Mobile and Fox Interactive Media have adopted Greenplum for sophisticated, high-performance data analytics.

The acquisition of Greenplum will be an all-cash transaction and is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2010, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact to EMC GAAP and non-GAAP EPS for the full 2010 fiscal year.

Upon close, Bill Cook will lead the new data computing product division and report to Pat Gelsinger. EMC will continue to offer Greenplum’s full product portfolio to customers and plans to deliver new EMC Proven reference architectures as well as an integrated hardware and software offering designed to improve performance and drive down implementation costs.

CiRBA Eyes Japanese Market Along With Hitachi Systems & Services

by Leave a Comment

CiRBA, a provider of Data Center Intelligence (DCI) software, today announced it has signed a partnership agreement with Hitachi Systems.

Hitachi Systems will leverage CiRBA’s analytics software in its new “Virtualization Assessment Service,” which is part of its IT resource optimization product line. Hitachi Systems will use CiRBA to assess and plan consolidation initiatives within its customer base.

CiRBA’s powerful analytics provide a way for service providers to dramatically reduce the amount of effort required to determine optimal workload placements during transformations. CiRBA enables SI’s to differentiate their service offerings by delivering quality answers more efficiently.

CiRBA partners such as Hitachi Systems may also resell CiRBA software to customers wishing to leverage the solution to manage the efficiency of virtual environments over the long term.

MTI Closes First European Deal for the VMware, Cisco & EMC Cloud Coalition (VCE)

by Leave a Comment

MTI, an international provider of consulting services and comprehensive information infrastructure solutions for mid- to large-size organisations, has sold the first Vblock 1 solution in Europe.

The customer, Cobweb, is a managed services provider in the UK and Europe. Vblock infrastructure packages are integrated and tested IT solutions stemming from the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, that combine virtualisation, networking, storage, security, and management technologies by Cisco, EMC and VMware.

Vblock 1, which MTI also has installed in its own UK Solution Centre, is based on Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), EMC’s CLARiiON storage system and VMware’s vSphere 4 platform. The package helps organisations accelerate their adoption of private cloud environments while eliminating the risks traditionally associated with the deployment of this IT model.

During the last six months the “Cobweb Cloud” model has seen great traction in the mid-size and enterprise space. In order to meet this market demand Cobweb required a scalable and efficient “pay-as-you-grow” virtualisation and compute platform. After many months of testing the Vblock with MTI it proved to satisfy the needs of the business.

Cobweb was attracted to the Vblock 1 package as it offers all the benefits associated with the cloud computing such as lower total cost of ownership and faster deployment. The solution can be used as a platform to host a range of existing and new services. MTI has been helping Cobweb build and maintain a best-in-class Microsoft Exchange hosting service for the past five years. The brief includes ensuring high availability in order to serve customers such as the Transport for London website 24/7, whilst having the ability to expand the range of services to include SharePoint and CRM among others.

MTI is certified to the highest Data Centre level with Cisco, EMC and VMware. The company holds the Advanced Data Centre Partner Specialisation (DCNI, DCSN & ATP) from Cisco UKI, having been an EMC Velocity Signature Solutions Centre Partner for many years. MTI recently announced its status as a VMware Premier partner. For organisations looking to learn more about the VCE coalition and Vblock solutions, MTI offers a number of workshops that enable IT administrators to better understand these packages to ultimately make informed decisions.