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Watch4net has added new ReportPack for Vblock Infrastructure Packages to its APG Software Suite.

With this new module designed for Cisco, EMC, and VMware Cloud Computing offerings, APG discovers, models and monitors the end-to-end dependencies across storage, servers, network and virtualization domains, managing Vblocks as a single entity.

Key performance metrics are collected for all Vblock components and analyzed in context with their relationships with and impacts on other resources. This provides organizations (service providers and enterprises alike) with unified visibility into their data centers, showing in real-time the dependencies between services and underlying applications, operating systems and Vblock infrastructures as well as giving them detailed insight into the quality of service delivered.

Operation teams can map service-related issues with infrastructure components, and vice-versa, in order to facilitate troubleshooting and better meet committed service levels.

Features:

• Predefined performance instrumentation, certified for Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus family, Cisco MDS 9000 series, EMC Symmetrix VMAX, EMC Unified Storage (Celerra and CLARiiON family) and VMware vSphere™.

• More than 300+ out-of-the box reports and dashboards, covering fabrics interconnects chassis, servers, ESX and VMs, Server Policies, Traffic Utilization, LUNs, Physical Disks.

• Representation of services dependencies across the data center — including applications, servers, networks, storage — both physical and virtual.

• Real-time Performance Scorecards, Trending Analysis, SLA compliance Reporting, Adaptive alerting, Inventory Reports.

• Global Search Functions, spanning all devices in the data-center.

• Inbound and Outbound adapters to exchange data with third-party applications – CMDBs, Service Catalogue, EMS/NMS…

• Customizable, multi-customers web portal, with role & profile access-control.

• Agent-less approach, leveraging SNMP agents, Cisco UCS API and EMC storage management APIs.

• Distributed and Scalable architecture, supporting tens of thousands of devices and millions of indicators.

Wyse Technology, the cloud client computing company, today announced the public beta of its Wyse PocketCloud application for the Android operating system.

Wyse PocketCloud Beta is available immediately at the Android Market as a free download.

Wyse PocketCloud is a mobile remote desktop application that allows end users to access Windows PCs, Remote Desktop Services and virtualized desktop infrastructures based on the Microsoft RDP protocol. It’s the only client that is VMware Ready Certified for VMware View available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Wyse PocketCloud integrates seamlessly into an already-established VMware View host environment, included integrated enterprise-level security, and does not require any special setup or software installed.

Wyse PocketCloud was originally released for the iPhone in August 2009 and has been one of the Top 10 Business Applications on Apple’s App Store. Wyse PocketCloud enables users to remotely run their PC desktop or virtual desktop from a large variety of hosts, including VMware View, Microsoft Windows 7 Pro, Enterprise & Ultimate, Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Business and Remote Desktop Services in all Windows Server products.

PocketCloud for Android Beta includes the following features:

— Support for most popular Android devices including the Motorola Droid, HTC Incredible, Google Nexus One, HTC Hero and Sprint HTC EVO

— VMware View 4 Support (pending certification)

— RDP 7 Support

— Fast, interactive, and enjoyable user experience

— Advanced high-accuracy Mouse Touch Pointer

— Custom keyboard with function and short-cut keys

— Remote app scrolling (scroll within MS Word or PowerPoint)

— Automatic Keyboard activation

— Dynamic compression, optimized for 3G and Wi-Fi connections

— Enterprise grade security: 128-bit encryption and FIPS support

— Direct connections and advanced tunneling with TLS/SSL encryption

— Experimental support for RSA Two-Factor Authentication

Sparxent today announced the launch of Tech Preview of Sparxent VirtualOffice in the UK.

Sparxent VirtualOffice is a cloud hosted, monthly subscription-based, applications-on-demand service providing immediate access to remote desktop sessions and applications through an automated provisioning portal. Access Microsoft Office anywhere, any time and on any device.

Sparxent VirtualOffice is ideal for companies considering BYOC (“Bring Your Own Computer) model, using Citrix Receiver VirtualOffice is available offers a world-class virtual experience from any location; as well as from any device (including Windows, iPad, iPhone, Android, Linux, Mac, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile).

This allows business users invested in content, both consuming and creating it in a variety of forms, to use almost any mobile device, including the iPad, as the main business device.

AppSense, provider of user virtualisation solutions, today announced that it has partnered with Fujitsu to provide desktop management solutions to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for more than 1,000 locations in the UK.

Effective on the first of September, the six-year contract involves approximately 140,000 desktop devices, and is one of the largest desktop and thin client outsource deals in Europe.

Fujitsu selected AppSense’s user virtualisation technology to effectively manage user-specific information independent of the desktop. AppSense Environment Manager will be used to manage the user’s personalisation features and reapply them on-demand at each login. In addition, Environment Manager will be used to help migrate users to new desktops while ensuring the user experience is seamless.

DataCore Software, a provider of storage virtualization software, today announced that Waterstons, a Gold Accredited Partner, has selected its storage virtualization software to provide the infrastructure to power their cloud-based computing service.

Waterstons provides cloud hosting services from a purpose-built Tier 3 data center in the North of England, monitored and managed around-the-clock from their regional operations center in Durham.

Through this service Waterstons are offering a comprehensive range of options: customers can take a single, virtual machine from Waterstons for only a month, or an entire network of servers – interconnected with one or more private, virtual networks – residing on a highly available infrastructure.

Waterstons offers flexible and resilient Internet connectivity options for hosted infrastructure and offers hosting and co-location of physical hardware. Flexibility is paramount – many customers use a combination of offerings, and Waterstons specializes in providing a tailored service to meet customer needs.

Underpinning the service is a pair of DataCore SANsymphony servers on Dell hardware, operating in a synchronously mirrored configuration and thereby avoiding a single point of failure scenario. Waterstons has made a considerable investment in eliminating single points of failure in the infrastructure, which is seen as critical to providing a high-quality service suitable for running hosted line of business applications. Waterstons is currently commissioning a second identical infrastructure in a geographically remote data center in order to provide replicated disaster recovery (DR).

StorageCraft UK, a provider of disaster recovery, system migration, data protection and security solutions for servers, desktops and laptops, has announced the launch of VirtualBoot to enable temporary restoration of servers and keep organisations in business whilst repairs to physical machines are made.

VirtualBoot, which is part of the latest version of its flagship ShadowProtect suite, improves on the original virtualisation features, such as Hardware Independent Restore (HIR), to give administrators the ability to boot any ShadowProtect backup image into a virtual machine using Sun/Oracle VirtualBox.

To do this IT administrators simply need to right-click on the ShadowProtect backup image file and boot it as a virtual machine, which takes approximately two minutes, regardless of the size of the server or backup image; even terabytes can be booted in a few minutes.

In addition to the functionality offered by VirtualBoot, ShadowProtect also allows easy migration from physical environments to virtual ones, and from virtual to physical — or any combination of the two (P2P, P2V, V2V or V2P). In conjunction with the Hardware Independent Restore technology in ShadowProtect, which enables organisations to change environment no matter what kind of hardware they are switching to or from, this offers significant savings in terms of recovery times and costs.

Alongside VirtualBoot, ShadowProtect now offers functionality that enables all backup images to be converted into a virtual machine either in .VHD or .VMDK format without the need to use any third-party technology, providing greater flexibility and control over your systems.