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

Release: Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7

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Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7 is available now at Parallels.com and Amazon, and will be available at retail stores starting on May 31.

Parallels’ new software empowers PC owners to simply and safely upgrade from any edition of Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7, as well as keep and use their existing programs – even if they are not yet compatible with Windows 7.

Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7 benefits include:

  • Simplified Windows 7 Upgrade Experience: Parallels Express Installation allows you to complete the upgrade to Windows 7 on your existing PC without having to stay at your computer. The Upgrade Wizard makes it easy by walking you step-by-step through the process.
  • No Need to Reinstall Programs or Find DVDs: The Parallels Upgrade Agent moves all your programs, data and media from your old computer to your new Windows 7 computer so you don’t have to find DVDs.
  • Simply Transfer Programs, Files, Settings and Media to Your New PC: The included Parallels high-speed USB transfer cable, your network connection or an external hard drive make it easy to transfer your programs, files, settings and media to your new PC.
  • Keep and Run Programs Not Yet Compatible with Windows 7: Parallels enables you to continue to run programs that aren’t yet ready for Windows 7 and do so seamlessly from within Windows 7 by accessing them from the Start menu.
  • Quickly Learn How to Work in Windows 7: Interactive video tutorials are available on demand to help you quickly learn how to work in Windows 7.

Parallels Desktop Upgrade to Windows 7 is available for $49.99 with a Parallels high-speed USB transfer cable, making it easy to move to a new Windows 7 PC, or for $39.99 without a cable, making it easy to upgrade your current PC to Windows 7.

CA Technologies and Cisco Team Up

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CA Technologies and Cisco earlier this week announced they are expanding their relationship through collaborative technology integration.

Their latest work is designed to enable organizations to achieve greater agility, automation and scale in their data center operations, while accelerating the move toward cloud computing-based services. Launched today is the release of CA Service Assurance and Service Automation solutions designed to support the Cisco Unified Computing System.

The integration of Cisco’s Unified Computing System™ data center platform with the CA systems management suite enables customers to accelerate the deployment of new applications, streamline operations, reduce costs and provide reliable service delivery in public and private cloud computing environments.

  • The ability to manage the Cisco Unified Computing System natively from CA Technologies’ leading management software provides unified management capabilities to help customers see and control the platform infrastructure and application stack.
  • CA Technologies and Cisco today are announcing the integration of three CA management tools with the Cisco Unified Computing System. Utilizing the Cisco UCS Manager open XML API (Application Programming Interface), CA Technologies has integrated management of the Cisco Unified Computing System platform into the following solutions:
    • CA Spectrum Automation Manager – A policy-based server provisioning and automation tool
    • CA eHealth Performance Manager – A performance management solution that monitors device health across an organization’s entire infrastructure
    • CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager – An integrated management solution for fault isolation and root cause analysis, and network configuration management
  • CA Technologies has integrated operating system provisioning on top of Cisco Unified Computing System service profiles natively within the CA Spectrum Automation Manager interface, enabling IT organizations to manage resources according to predefined service-level agreements for each business application.
  • The CA Service Assurance tools—CA eHealth Performance Manager and CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager —also discover Cisco UCS server and network topology and gather performance and status statistics for reporting and analysis. CA’s ‘OneClick’ management interface further simplifies operational processes, improving staff responsiveness and productivity.
  • The integrated solution enables the deployment of new computing approaches within existing processes, with reduced operational overhead.
    • Users of existing CA tools and CA-based policies and processes manage the Cisco Unified Computing System platform directly from this same management suite, enabling accelerated adoption of benefits such as unprecedented flexibility, power savings, extended memory and virtualized I/O.
    • Standard x86 application stacks can easily and reliably be run anywhere within a Unified Computing System environment, with familiar CA Technologies solutions.
  • Cisco is working with industry-leading companies such as CA Technologies to build a comprehensive ecosystem of data center partners to help ease customer transitions to virtualized and cloud environments; the systems management area is one of the key technology areas being addressed in this industry ecosystem.

Hitachi Data Systems Introduces Enhanced Software Support for Virtualized Environments

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Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, this week announced Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer 2.0, an all-in-one availability and performance monitoring software product for midsized business IT environments.

Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer simplifies IT management by allowing customers to monitor the availability of servers, switches and storage devices from one screen. At the same time it reduces the mean time to diagnose (MTTD) IT infrastructure outages, resolving one of the key pain points for midsized organizations.

In a single interface, Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer shows the availability and performance of the heterogeneous servers, LAN, SAN and storage devices on a network. The patent-pending root cause analysis feature enables a key benefit – the reduction of MTTD in IT environment outages by up to 90 percent. Additionally, Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer has the capability to integrate with independent software vendor (ISV) applications and third party devices, via plug-ins, providing unified monitoring of the entire network infrastructure.

Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer has all the essential features needed to monitor the performance and availability of midsized organizations’ IT assets. New features in version 2.0 include:

  • Enhanced virtualization support including Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere
  • Expanded device monitoring – up to 750 nodes per license
  • Now supports Hitachi Universal Storage Platform® VM, Microsoft Hyper-V, SUSE Linux, Cisco ISR, Extreme, Linksys/Cisco (SGE) and Enterasys.
  • Partner and ISV enabled plug-in development (open platform)

Vision Solutions To Buy Double-Take Software

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Double-Take Software, a provider of recovery solutions, has entered into a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by Vision Solutions, a portfolio company of Thoma Bravo, in a transaction with a net offer value of approximately $242 million.

The Double-Take Board of Directors unanimously approved the agreement and has recommended the approval of the transaction to Double-Take’s stockholders.

Under the terms of the agreement, Double-Take stockholders will receive $10.55 in cash for each share of Double-Take common stock they hold, representing a premium of approximately 39% and 21% to Double-Take’s enterprise value and closing share price of $8.71, respectively, on April 9, 2010, the last business day prior to Double-Take’s announcement that its Board of Directors was considering indications of interest to acquire the Company.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the expiration or earlier termination of the Hart-Scott Rodino waiting period and the approval of Double-Take stockholders. The transaction is not subject to a financing condition, and debt commitments for the merger consideration have been received by Vision Solutions. Double-Take expects the transaction to close in the third quarter of 2010.

Release: Veeam Reporter 4.0

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Veeam Software this week unveiled a major update, version 4.0, of its Veeam Reporter for VMware.

Veeam Reporter 4.0, formerly known as Veeam Reporter Enterprise, provides a single location where both business and technical users can perform enterprise reporting, change management and capacity planning for their virtual environment.

Veeam Reporter is integrated with Veeam Business View to provide IT executives and managers with the analytics they need to manage the virtual environment from a business perspective. For example, IT managers can see how storage is allocated and utilized by business unit, department and type of application. Veeam Business View also identifies uncategorized virtual machines (VMs) with no owner assigned, helping to control VM sprawl.

Veeam Reporter 4.0 includes these additional enhancements:

  • Enterprise Reporting: A new reporting engine, based on Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), enables users to access reports via a web-based interface. SSRS is very scalable and easily accommodates many simultaneous users.
  • Change Management: Improved change management reports, including new audit information for changed objects, enable users to see the “who, what, where, when and how” of every change. If a VM suddenly disappears, slows down or stops working altogether, users can quickly identify not only what changed but also who made the change.
  • Capacity Planning: Version 4 can look into the future. With host utilization approaching 80 percent or more, capacity planning is a key virtualization management challenge. The product’s new capacity planning report pack projects future resource requirements based on historical growth and past performance. Reporter has the detailed data and built-in expertise needed to ensure service levels, even as demand grows.
  • Redesigned web-based user interface and new dashboard capabilities: Version 4 includes a customizable dashboard that allows users to observe the most important aspects of the virtual environment at a glance. Reports can also be integrated into third-party dashboards and intranet web portals, such as Microsoft SharePoint.

Veeam Reporter 4.0 is available immediately. North American MSRP remains unchanged at $375 per CPU socket.

BMC Software Touts Over $100 Million in “Cloud Foundation” Deals Closed

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BMC Software last Monday announced that it has passed the $100 million mark in highly strategic “cloud foundation” deals where virtualization and computing management capabilities were the key element in the customer’s final selection.

More and more customers are seeking to unify the management of their physical, virtual, cloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) initiatives. Customers typically define the “foundation” for successful cloud computing as the implementation of tightly integrated service management and datacenter automation solutions, the clear prerequisites for subsequent cloud services implementations. BMC has seen a steady strengthening pattern of significant wins in cloud management platform deals.

In the past year, BMC has won 25 large proof-of-concept and technical design shoot-outs for virtualization and cloud management at some of the largest enterprises in the world. BMC also has been selected by five of the top 20 telecom companies as their standard platform for virtualization and cloud management, a very positive trend. In the last two quarters, two of the top five systems integrators and one of the top three global software companies have standardized on BMC, resulting in full competitive replacements. All of these instances represent multi-million-dollar deals.

During the past two years, the demand for BMC’s hybrid datacenter management solutions has steadily escalated among enterprise companies eager to leverage the power of physical, virtual, SaaS and cloud infrastructure.