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AutoVirt, provider of file virtualization and data management solutions, today announced that A&W Food Services of Canada, one of Canada‘s largest and fastest growing restaurant chains, is implementing a virtualized file storage environment with AutoVirt.

The AutoVirt solution was chosen to replace existing StorageX technology, as AutoVirt offered a more advanced and easier to use solution for the management of backend corporate file systems, over the soon to be end-of-lifed StorageX technology.  A&W’s new virtualized environment, which will come online without any disruption to users, will enable A&W to completely reorganize its file environment for streamlined backup, retention and security policies, leading to tremendous improvements in operational efficiency and dramatic cost savings.

When Bruce Jamieson, the company’s Network Systems Manager, joined the Corporate IT Department about five years ago, he inherited a number of challenges, especially in regards to the company’s backend file storage environment.  The file system had very little structure, making it impossible for Jamieson to separate the relatively few files that required specialized policy-based treatment from the rest of the data.  As a result, Jamieson needed to apply the same expensive backup, retention and security policies to all the files in his environment.  Jamieson needed to find a solution that would enable him to clean up, and then more easily manage the company’s backend corporate file data.  After an extremely successful server virtualization initiative, he was sold on the value of virtualization and decided to apply a virtualization solution to his file infrastructure as well.

Jamieson also plans to leverage AutoVirt’s file virtualization capabilities to consolidate how his users view and access their files, making it easier for them to find what they are looking for.  Jamieson will be able to archive unused files to lower-cost SATA drives, shrink A&W’s backup window, and apply appropriate retention policies to data after users leave the company. These activities all result in hard and soft savings across disk, tape, hardware, software and operational processes.

F5 Networks today announced new Application Delivery Controller platforms, extending its BIG-IP product family.

F5 is offering a new high-end appliance series with the BIG-IP 11050 platform and a new 8950 hardware appliance featuring higher throughput and enhanced layer 4 performance. In addition, F5 is delivering production and lab versions of its virtual appliance, BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Virtual Edition (VE). Together, F5’s physical and virtual ADC solutions provide enterprises and service providers with greater flexibility, offering a hybrid approach to architecting an adaptable and highly scalable application delivery network.

The addition of these new hardware platforms and BIG-IP LTM VE improves F5’s ability to provide the foundations of a flexible ADN architecture and support the company’s vision for enterprise cloud architecture. With these agile infrastructure components, organizations can implement a framework to deliver services dynamically as application and network conditions change.

The F5 TMOS architecture means that all BIG-IP appliances—physical and virtual—can leverage the flexible capabilities of the iRules programming language and iControl API, as well as the resources from the company’s DevCentral community. With these powerful, unified technologies, customers can achieve comprehensive visibility and control over their application delivery environments.

BIG-IP 8950 & 11050 Hardware Helps Customers Meet Growing Throughput Demands

• The new platforms support high throughput levels to meet the application delivery needs of service providers and organizations that put a premium on transactions per second, such as financial institutions. The BIG-IP 8950 platform features a throughput level of 20 Gbps, while the 11050 boasts 42 Gbps.
• The solutions support 10 Gb Ethernet connectivity to help bandwidth-conscious customers deliver enhanced application services. The platforms provide ideal solutions for customers that have configured their data centers around 10GE or are currently planning to upgrade their infrastructure.
• With the 8950 and 11050 platforms, customers have the ability to incorporate additional application services (acceleration, high availability, application security, etc.), as their business needs evolve. Because these capabilities can be added to the existing ADN hardware platform, F5 solutions offer both enhanced functionality and optimum performance.

BIG-IP LTM VE Improves ADC Scalability and Simplifies Solution Deployment

• Virtual ADCs can be rapidly deployed and scaled to support applications as resources are needed. In addition, cloud providers can leverage virtual ADCs to apply specific application policies on a per-customer basis to support individual organizations’ business priorities.
• BIG-IP LTM VE provides improved evaluation, development, integration, QA, and staging for application delivery policies and deployments. By enabling customers to deploy a virtual BIG-IP device in a testing lab, customers can conveniently test how applications and networks will respond in a production environment. This capability also enables customers to evaluate the addition of other ADC services such as SSL offloading, caching, and compression, and seamlessly transfer from testing scenarios into production.
• BIG-IP LTM VE will be available in a full production version and a non-production lab version, as well as the previously announced trial. The full production version features variable throughput options up to 1Gbps. The lab version enables in-depth testing, and is best suited for efforts around application development, test, QA, and other non-production scenarios.
• Unlike other virtualized application delivery offerings, BIG-IP LTM VE is part of a comprehensive application delivery architecture platform. This means that it has been designed to operate in tight integration with F5’s broad product portfolio, as well as support solutions from other leading virtualization companies such as VMware.

The BIG-IP 8950 and 11050 hardware platforms will be available in April. Production and Lab versions of the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Virtual Edition will also be available in April.

VMware this week announced financial results for the first quarter 2010:

• Revenues for the first quarter were $634 million, an increase of 35% from the first quarter of 2009.
• GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $102 million, an increase of 18% from the first quarter of 2009.  Non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $175 million, an increase of 45% from the first quarter of 2009.
• GAAP net income for the first quarter was $78 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, compared to $70 million, or $0.18 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2009. Non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $133 million, or $0.32 per diluted share, compared to $100 million, or $0.25 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2009.
• Cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2010 were $2.8 billion, an increase of 36% compared to a year ago. Total deferred revenues were $1.4 billion, an increase of 48% from the same period a year ago.
• Operating cash flows were $355 million, an increase of 37% from the first quarter of 2009. Free cash flows for the quarter were $326 million, an increase of 68% from the first quarter of 2009.  For the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2010, operating cash flows were $1.1 billion and free cash flows were $972 million.

US revenues for the first quarter increased 30% to $317 million from the first quarter of 2009.  International revenues for the first quarter grew 40% to $317 million from the first quarter of 2009.

License revenues were $312 million, an increase of 21% from the first quarter of 2009.
Services revenues, which include software maintenance and professional services, were $322 million, an increase of 51% from the first quarter of 2009.

“The quarter’s strong performance reinforces our position that virtualization is becoming a cornerstone for customer’s IT strategy, particularly since it enables them an evolutionary path forward to cloud computing,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer.  “With this broad acceptance of virtualization, it allows us to maintain an innovative and aggressive strategy to help remove complexity from IT and deliver on our vision of enabling IT-as-a-service.”

Recent Highlights & Strategic Announcements

• VMware Partner Exchange 2010 broke the event’s 2009 attendance and sponsorship records with more than 2,600 attendees and 55 sponsors, including Arrow ECS, Cisco, EMC, HP, Ingram Micro, NetApp, Novell, Trend Micro and Wyse.
• VMware announced a definitive agreement with EMC to acquire certain products and expertise from EMC’s Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of servers and applications in a virtualized data center.
• VMware announced programs for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market including the availability of VMware Go, a Web-based service that provides an easy on-ramp to virtualization, and the promotion of vSphere Essentials, offering up to 50% off the list price for SMBs.
• Cisco and NetApp, along with VMware introduced a Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture designed to provide enhanced security in cloud environments.

Sourcefire, the creators of Snort and a provider of cybersecurity solutions, today announced the expansion of the Sourcefire 3D System to support the Xen 3.3.2 and 3.4.2 virtualization platforms.

Now supporting the two leading virtual environments – Xen and VMware – Sourcefire is enabling customers with diverse virtual platforms to further protect these investments, while also leveraging these resources to increase intrusion prevention capabilities.

Sourcefire’s Virtual 3D Sensor and Virtual Defense Centre now provide Xen environments with all the functionality originally available for VMware. Users can deploy Virtual 3D Sensors to inspect traffic between two or more Xen or VMware virtual machines, while also using physical Sourcefire 3D Sensors to inspect traffic going into and out of a virtual environment.

With this support for both Xen and VMware, Sourcefire is making it easier to deploy and manage virtual sensors at remote sites where physical resources may be limited, such as retail stores and branch offices, or where little rack space remains in the datacenter. This release also provides additional flexibility to enterprises and cloud computing companies, which rely on a variety of virtualisation platforms to support specific requirements.

The Virtual 3D Sensor provides simultaneous execution of Sourcefire IPS, RNA (Real-time Network Awareness) and RUA (Real-time User Awareness) functions. Customers can deploy the Virtual Defense Centre to monitor any combination of up to 25 virtual or physical 3D Sensors. They can also opt to monitor their Virtual 3D Sensors from the same physical Defense Center they use to monitor their physical 3D Sensors.