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

VM6 Software Scores $4 Million in Financing

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VM6 Software, provider of the only all-in-one IT virtualization infrastructure software, today announced that it has closed a $4 million series A round of investment with RBC Venture Partners and Ignition Partners.

The investment will further accelerate VM6 Software’s customer expansion, future software development and marketing and sales efforts worldwide. Additionally, industry veteran Stephen Pollack has joined VM6 Software’s board of directors, along with Richard Fade from Ignition Partners and Jean-David Begin from RBC Venture Partners.

VM6 VMex software offers small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) an all-in-one IT infrastructure solution that is designed to fully leverage the benefits of virtualization to manage, provision, consolidate and protect distributed servers and desktop environments at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. The VM6 VMex solution eliminates the need for SMBs to centralize the infrastructure, hire and train specialized experts, and integrate expensive multi-point solutions for server and desktop virtualization, high availability, storage and management.

Pollack is a seasoned entrepreneur and industry expert with more than 25 years of experience in the high-technology market.  His most recent success started in 2003 with the founding of PlateSpin Ltd., a recognized industry leader in the virtualization market, which was purchased by Novell.

In addition to recently joining the Microsoft BizSpark One program, VM6 Software also announced the general availability of its VM6 VMex Enterprise Edition, which leverages Microsoft Hyper-V™ to combine virtualization with shared storage, advanced clustering, and intuitive management and monitoring. Customers using VM6 VMex are managing the network, desktops, applications, and physical and virtual servers as objects within their environments, all without the need for any external shared storage.  With a single console to manage the entire enterprise or each site individually, administrators can easily manage up to 65,000 distributed objects.

Release: Xen 4.0 Hypervisor

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Xen.org, the home of the open source Xen hypervisor, today announced the immediate availability of Xen 4.0, the most advanced open source hypervisor software available.

The release is the collective effort of a global development team representing more than 50 leading technology vendors, universities, and virtualization experts. Leveraging the latest network cards optimized for virtualization, Xen 4.0 provides users substantial performance and scalability gains for any level of enterprise or cloud application workload.

Xen 4.0 adds significant memory and security optimizations that will drive virtualization infrastructure to an entirely new class of performance. As a result, virtualization is made suitable for all workloads, even network intensive and high performance computing applications that would have previously experienced compromised performance on any hypervisor. Xen 4.0 enables virtualization to be deployed ubiquitously, across every server in a datacenter, bringing ease of management, secure architecture, high availability, agility and efficiency to all applications.

Key Facts and Highlights

  • Fault Tolerance – Xen 4.0 now supports live transactional synchronization of VM states between physical servers as a basic component, enabling administrators to guarantee a high degree of service reliability without requiring additional software solutions.
  • High Availability – Xen 4.0 leverages the advanced reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features in new Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors.
  • Netchannel2 – Xen 4.0’s NetChannel2 takes full advantage of significant advancements in networking hardware such as SMART NICs with multi-queue and SR-IOV functionality, which provides virtualization infrastructure with superior data processing capabilities.
  • Blktap2 – A new virtual hard disk (VHD) implementation in Xen 4.0 delivers high performance VM snapshots and cloning features as well as the ability to do live virtual disk snapshots without stopping a VM process.
  • PVOps Domain 0 – Xen 4.0 is the first release from Xen.org to formally support PVOps in the Domain0 (Dom0) Linux kernel; this new kernel option allows administrators access to the most recent devices supported by the Linux kernel.
  • Memory Enhancements – New algorithms, such as Transcendent Memory and Page Sharing have been introduced in Xen 4.0 to enhance the performance and capabilities of the hypervisor memory operations.
  • A full list of features can be found on the Xen Community web site

Xen 4.0 is available for immediate download from the Xen community site: http://xen.org/.

Gartner: Global IT Spending to Grow 5.3 Percent in 2010

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Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach $3.4 trillion in 2010, a 5.3 percent increase from IT spending of $3.2 trillion in 2009, according to Gartner.

The IT industry will continue to show steady growth with IT spending in 2011 projected to surpass $3.5 trillion, a 4.2 percent increase from 2010.

“Following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. “However, it’s important to note that nearly 4 percentage points of this growth will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the dollar relative to last year. IT spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars will still grow 1.6 percent this year, after declining 1.4 percent in 2009.”

Worldwide computing hardware spending is forecast to reach $353 billion in 2010, a 5.7 percent increase from 2009 (see Table 1). Robust consumer spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware spending in 2010. Enterprise hardware spending will grow again in 2010, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014. Spending on storage will enjoy the fastest growth in terms of enterprise spending as the volume of enterprise data that needs to be stored continues to increase. Near-term spending on servers will be concentrated on lower-end servers; longer-term, server spending will be curtailed by virtualization, consolidation and, potentially, cloud computing.

Abtech, Pano Logic Partner to Offer “Zero-Client” Virtual Desktop Solution

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Abtech Systems, a provider of enterprise technology solutions, has teamed with manufacturing vendor partner Pano Logic to introduce The Pano System, the greener answer to tedious desktop replacement and maintenance.

Abtech, along with VMware and Pano Logic, can help companies simplify their computing infrastructure and reduce or eliminate costs for any organization. Pano Logic brands itself as the leader in zero client desktop virtualization (VDI). Its solutions are gaining a rapid following because they are radically changing desktop computing by centralizing everything – desktop management, support, and the user experience – on the server.

Executives and business managers agree that one of the most significant burdens to an IT budget is the ongoing purchase, maintenance and lifecycle management of desktop & laptop computers. Abtech solves the problem by designing a virtual desktop solution that will significantly reduce common IT issues, providing a business with a better computing experience plus greater financial benefits.

In most organizations the Pano Logic solution can be deployed in under an hour. It eliminates the complexity and overhead of endpoint devices, which can comprise 80 percent of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of thin clients, with a zero client that contains no processor, operating system, storage, drivers, nor any moving parts. By removing processing power from the endpoint, Abtech can eliminate endpoint security breaches, and drastically reduce energy consumption.

The Pano Logic device redefines green technology. At less than three watts per user, zero clients consume 97 percent less than even the most energy efficient PCs and weigh less than 16 ounces, and last seven to 10 years, compared to the average 15-pound PC that lasts three to five years, resulting in a dramatic reduction in e-waste.

Abtech expects its Pano Logic virtual desktop solution to be a hit among middle market organizations in health care, education, law, government, manufacturing, banking, and especially to companies that are subject to HIPAA and Sarbannes-Oxley compliance. Abtech can help these organizations achieve dramatic savings and benefits without the need for specialized IT competencies and staff. Thanks to Abtech, IT managers are able to deliver end users a familiar Windows experience while providing them with greater uptime and mobility to access their desktops from any zero client on the network.

Abtech offers its customized virtual desktop solution throughout its network of 18 service offices across the U.S. Abtech offers 7x24x365 support and a full compliment of maintenance and support services, which includes hardware and software maintenance, on site or remote consulting, disaster recovery, data center relocation, training, performance analyses, and capacity planning.

InstallFree Bridge 2.0 Now Available to Accelerate Windows 7 Migration

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InstallFree, a developer of desktop application virtualization and management solutions, has announced the general availability of Version 2.0 of its flagship product, the InstallFree Bridge.

The new release helps customers speed migrations to Windows 7 by using InstallFree’s unique application virtualization technology to eliminate desktop and web application compatibility issues, including the ability to run older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows 7.

The InstallFree Bridge is immediately available for free evaluation, either by downloading the software or by using InstallFree’s new online Hands-On Lab, which enables customers to test the product “in the cloud”. Customers can register for the evaluation on the InstallFree Web Site. InstallFree is also announcing a limited-time promotional product packaging and pricing to help customers get a jump start on their Windows 7 migration projects.

InstallFree enables IT organizations to get out of the “application repackaging business” by creating isolated, modular and portable virtual applications that can run on any version of Windows and be updated on-the-fly. InstallFree Virtual Applications seamlessly integrate into the end-user’s environment and fully communicate with the OS and other applications without making any changes to the underlying OS file system or registry. They enable full end-user productivity in locked-down PC environments and create a fully portable end-user environment that can be seamlessly migrated between computers and operating systems.

GWOS, Eucalyptus Systems Announce Application Management Coverage for Private Clouds

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GroundWork Open Source (GWOS) and Eucalyptus Systems have announced that they have partnered to deliver complete monitoring and management of applications running in a Eucalyptus private cloud environment through the GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud solution.

The GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud provides detailed monitoring for Eucalyptus clouds as well as for traditional data center resources and public clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

GWOS is now recruiting participants for the GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud beta program. Participants will use the new GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud to correlate and visualize application availability and performance information simultaneously across their traditional datacenter, a Eucalyptus private cloud, and Amazon EC2, providing superior scalability for applications managed in these environments.

Eucalyptus is open source software for implementing on-premise cloud computing using an organization’s own secure IT infrastructure, without modification, special-purpose hardware or reconfiguration. Eucalyptus turns data center resources such as machines, networks, and storage systems into a cloud that is controlled and customized by local IT. Eucalyptus is fully compatible with the Amazon AWS cloud infrastructure and is available in two editions: Eucalyptus open source and Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (EE), which supports VMware technologies.

GWOS’ new Enterprise Cloud package provides automatic instance and application monitoring by understanding the topology of cloud infrastructures and intelligently aggregating results into a single screen for administrators, operators and application engineers.

The GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud beta program offers:

  • GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud usage to cover on-premise, public or private cloud hosted applications and infrastructure
  • Access to Eucalyptus EE, including VMware support to implement private clouds in existing environments.
  • The opportunity to provide direct feedback to the engineering and product teams, helping define the future of IT operations in the cloud.
  • Engineering and technical assistance for the duration of the beta program.

Participants will gain these benefits with the combined GWOS and Eucalyptus

  • Quickly and easily build and monitor private and hybrid clouds with your existing environment and other public clouds
  • Run Amazon Machine Image (AMI) instances on VMware-based hypervisors within your Eucalyptus private cloud
  • Seamlessly manage environments with multiple hypervisors (Xen, KVM, vSphere, ESX™ and ESXi™) under one management console
  • Manage service performance and availability based on IT monitoring insight trend and usage reports across environments.