Europe

Veeam Goes After European Market With VMware Management Tools

September 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Veeam Software today announced its entry into the European market. The company has launched a dedicated sales organisation, headquartered in its new UK-based EMEA headquarters office, for customers seeking to improve the manageability of virtual IT infrastructures based on VMware‘s market leading virtualisation software. The European executive team will be led by Managing Director Colin Wright and comprise a number of executives who have joined Veeam Software from senior positions at VMware. In addition, Veeam is launching two new products, Veeam Monitor Version 3.0 and version 4 of its nworks enterprise management connectors.

A recent study by IDC found that eighty-two percent of European companies are using VMware. The study also found that across Europe, disaster recovery, backup and availability have been the main growth areas for virtualisation over the past year. In order to more effectively address these specific challenges, Veeam Software is establishing a sales organisation that mirrors VMware’s presence in Europe. From today, European VMware users will be able to access the entire Veeam Software portfolio, which includes Veeam Backup, Veeam Reporter, Veeam Configurator and Veeam Monitor. They will also be able to use the company’s nworks enterprise management connectors that enable organisations to manage VMware environments with systems management tools from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Founded in 2006, Veeam Software’s fifty strong development team quickly created a range of systems management tools for VMware ESX Server environments. Veeam actively sought customer feedback to its early versions, and is now beginning the rollout of its 3.0 releases, offering advanced capabilities and the innovative features customers want most. The company will launch into Europe with two brand new updates.

Veeam Monitor Version 3.0, an easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring solution, provides VMware administrators with performance monitoring, capacity planning and trend analysis, as well as troubleshooting and problem resolution. In addition, Veeam will launch Version 4.0 of its nworks enterprise management connectors, composed of new updates for the nworks Management Pack (MP) for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager; and the nworks Smart Plug-in (SPI) for VMware for HP Software Operations Manager. Both products offer major new capabilities including hardware and sensor status.

DataCore Announces European Partnership With Fujitsu-Siemens

September 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

DataCore Software, provider of storage virtualization software, and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Europe’s leading producer of IT-Infrastructure services, today announced a new partnership across Europe. With immediate effect, both companies will collaborate in distribution, marketing and technical support to optimize the experience for mutual customers and partners. The agreement is ongoing and has come about through the continued growth and market success of DataCore’s storage virtualization software projects and FSC’s IT-extensive hardware and project support.

The agreement focuses primarily in distribution and support, especially in the support of FSC reseller partners when they implement storage consolidation and SAN projects using DataCore’s SANmelody or SANsymphony solutions. Resellers, integrators and system vendors can utilize the technical support centers of FSC and can readily access information about products and developments, allowing them to reduce sales cycles and realize projects more efficiently. In addition, DataCore has been added to the Fujitsu-Siemens Computers catalog of recommended software solutions.

DataCore Software

IDC Research Shows Strong Server Virtualization Adoption in Europe

July 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

According to ONStor, Europe’s lagging in storage virtualization adoption. Recent research from IDC, however, shows the pace of adoption of virtualized servers is incredibly rapid among organizations that are using virtualization, with 35% of servers purchased in 2007 being virtualized and 52% of those bought in 2008 expected to be so. 54% of those not using virtualization expect to do so in the next 18 months.

“Virtualization use has exploded since our last survey of the European market,” said Chris Ingle, consulting and research director, IDC’s Systems Group. “Both large organizations and smaller businesses are using the technology for a wider range of applications and for business critical projects. As use of virtualization grows the challenges around managing complexity, finding skills and software licensing become more apparent”

Further Findings Include:

Organizations are increasing their virtualization of x86 systems for core business applications, although the majority of virtualization is still for test and development and for network server applications. Expertise and skills are the biggest barrier to virtualization adoption.
Growth of virtualization as a strategy remains strong, rising from 46% of the base to 54%. What is interesting is that virtualization is growing as a datacenter strategy in itself rather than as part of other projects. This supports the view that virtualization is increasingly seen as a standard for a wide range of workloads.
VMware is the clear market leader in providing virtualization technology with 82% of the sample using VMware. Despite high levels of Linux use, only 3% of the sample were using Xen as their virtualization platform. Microsoft was used by 13% of the sample base with various Unix technologies and mainframe accounting for 14%.
59% of implementations have fewer than four VMs or partitions per physical box. The largest growth area for virtualization use over the past year, particularly in small and medium businesses, is improving disaster recovery, backup, and enhancing availability.
Availability of skills and application vendor licensing are the factors causing most problems for virtualization users. 23% of virtualization users report that their application vendors’ licensing is still not meeting their needs and 33% of large businesses report that it limits use of virtualization.
Despite seeing virtualization as a vital tool for their business, the majority of organizations do not measure benefits and use virtual infrastructure in the same way they do physical infrastructure.

The IDC study was first carried out in 2007 and has been repeated in Q1 2008 with a larger sample of organizations and a wider range of questions.

ONStor Surveys Businesses, Claims Europe Lags US In Storage Virtualization Adoption

July 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Recent independent surveys conducted in both the United States and Europe by provider of clustered NAS solutions, ONStor, indicate that the majority of businesses surveyed in both regions believe that their existing storage solutions will only be able to scale for the next one to two years. Only 27% of European respondents are actually implementing storage virtualization today compared to 35% in the US.

73% of US respondents reported that they currently operate a virtualized server environment, and 67% answered that they are considering deploying virtualized storage in their data centers. In the US, 45% of businesses surveyed stated that they would realize operational cost savings between 20-40%, which is the main driver of storage adoption. In Europe that figure was near identical on 48%.

Other results from the survey:

59% of respondents believe that at the current growth rate, their existing storage solution will be able to scale for only one to two years; way ahead of the European market, which was on 40%
Half of US respondents believe that simplifying management is the most important consideration when choosing a storage virtualization solution. In Europe, the figure was far higher on 60% of the sample.

Respondents across both continents agree that as information continues to double year on year, storage virtualization is fast becoming a business imperative.

Xsigo Partners With Computacenter To Deliver I/O Virtualization To Europe

March 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

San Jose-based Xsigo announced that it has formally partnered with European IT services and solutions provider Computacenter. The partnership, which was announced about a month ago, encompasses technical, marketing and professional services relationships and confirms Xsigo as an integral component of Computacenter’s virtualization offering.

Computacenter claims to have chosen to partner with Xsigo due to its differentiated I/O virtualization product family (watch a short interview and live demo from their VMWorld Europe 2008 booth). Computacenter is a European provider of VMware server virtualization solutions, and is headquartered in Hatfield, UK.

“Virtualization offers organizations new opportunities to increase the efficiency and agility of their IT operations, but it can also place different demands on their data center infrastructure,” said Terry Walby, director of data center solutions at Computacenter. “We are continually looking for innovation and enhancement in the technology optimization solutions we deliver to our customers. By adding Xsigo virtual I/O products to our comprehensive portfolio of virtualization solutions, we can help customers further simplify and accelerate their transformation journey towards an optimized data center equipped to cope with the demands of the future.”

Xsigo sought to extend its I/O virtualization outside the US by developing a partnership in Europe which matched its vision for virtualization and simplification of the data center. Xsigo claims its I/O virtualization solutions allow large data centers to lower their server-related operational expenses by up to 80 %, cut capital costs by 50 %, and use 70 % less cabling.

“Computacenter’s services and solutions deliver the breadth and technical expertise to help customers optimize their operations, and Xsigo is the virtual I/O part of that equation,” stated Charlie Will, vice president of international sales at Xsigo. “Computacenter selects best-in-class products, such as VMware and Xsigo, and enriches these offerings with its own expertise in sales, support, and professional services. Computacenter puts it all together so that customers can rapidly deploy tightly integrated virtualization solutions that effectively address their business requirements.”

[Source: SYS-CON]