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Featured

VMware Unveils Horizon App Manager: Easy Cloud Application Management For $30 Per User / Year

May 17, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware this morning announced VMware Horizon App Manager, a user-centric management service for accessing cloud applications.

VMware Horizon App Manager represents the first component of the company’s “Project Horizon” vision first previewed at VMworld 2010.

A datasheet (PDF) is available here.

The company says future releases of VMware Horizon will broker user access to a variety of application types, virtual Windows desktops and data resources, while delivering the security and control required by businesses. The result should be a simple, seamless user experience when accessing work resources across the private and public cloud on whatever device the user chooses.

At its core, VMware Horizon App Manager includes an identity as a service hub that extends a user’s existing identity in systems such as Microsoft Active Directory or other directory options, into third-party public cloud applications like Box.net, BroadVision, Google, Salesforce.com, WebEx, Workday and others.

This simplifies the management of multiple access credentials, a necessity brought about by the growing number of cloud applications now found in a typical enterprise.

In addition, the VMware Horizon App Manager provides an open, user-centric platform for accessing cloud applications within a single application portal that is accessible from a wide range of end-user devices.

Additional VMware Horizon App Manager features include:

– Multi-Platform/Multi-Device Support
– Enterprise Directory Federation/Cloud Identity Hub
– Standards Based Secure Authentication
– Application Provisioning
– Roles-Based Access and Reporting

Available today to select early access customers in North America and Asia Pacific Region, and via trials in other regions, VMware Horizon App Manager is $30.00 per user/per year.

Check out Robert Scoble’s interview with VMware lead for Project Horizon Noah Wasmer.

Update: Chris Hoff’s take: VMware’s Horizon App Manager – A Big Bet That Will Pay Off…

 

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: Featured, Horizon App Manager, Project Horizon, vmware, VMware Horizon App Manager, VMware Project Horizon

VMware Acquires SlideRocket

May 9, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware recently announced that it has acquired SlideRocket, an SaaS-based business presentation provider.

Terms of the acquisition were not announced.

SlideRocket delivers innovative presentation solutions that uniquely leverage modern concepts of cloud computing, collaboration, social media and mobile computing platforms. More than 20,000 customers and 300,000 users leverage Slide Rocket to more effectively build, deliver and share presentations.

SlideRocket is built specifically to take advantage of a modern web and cloud based end-user computing model that blurs the lines between presentations, websites and multi-media content.

The acquisition of SlideRocket advances VMware’s vision for a modern end-user computing model leveraging cloud computing to securely deliver access to applications and data from any device, where and when a user needs it. Presentation software is second only to email as the most widely used business software.

Filed Under: Acquisitions, News Tagged With: Featured, SlideRocket, vmware

2011 Will Be the Year of Platform-as-a-Service: Gartner

March 17, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

All the leading enterprise software vendors, as well as large cloud specialists, will introduce new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings this year, making 2011 the year of PaaS, according to Gartner.

“By the end of 2011, the battle for leadership in PaaS and the key PaaS segments will engulf the software industry,” said Yefim Natis, vice president at Gartner. “Early consolidation of specialized PaaS offerings into PaaS suites will also be evident. New vendors will enter the market through acquisitions or in-house development. Users can expect a wave of innovation and hype. It will be harder to find a consistent message, standards or clear winning vendors.”

PaaS is a common reference to the layer of cloud technology architecture that contains all application infrastructure services, which are also known as “middleware” in other contexts.

PaaS is the middle layer of the software stack “in the cloud.” It is the technology that intermediates between the underlying system infrastructure (operating systems, networks, virtualization, storage, etc.) and overlaying application software. The technology services that are part of a full-scope PaaS include functionality of application containers, application development tools, database management systems, integration brokers, portals, business process management and many others — all offered as a service.

Today’s PaaS offerings come in a over a dozen of specialized types; however, during the next three years, the variety of PaaS specialist-subset offerings will consolidate to a few major application infrastructure service suites, and, over a longer time, comprehensive, full-scale PaaS offerings will emerge as well.

Gartner believes that during the next five years, the adoption of PaaS in most midsize and large organizations will not lead to a wholesale transition to cloud computing. Instead, it will be an extension of the use patterns of on-premises application infrastructures to hybrid computing models where on-premises application infrastructures and PaaS will coexist, interoperate and integrate.

Gartner predicts that by 2015, most enterprises will have part of their run-the-business software functionally executing in the cloud, using PaaS services or technologies directly or indirectly. Most such enterprises, will have a hybrid environment in which internal and external services are combined.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Featured, gartner, PaaS, platform as a service

Exclusive – Cisco’s Unified Computing Platform: The Details

March 16, 2009 by Lode Vermeiren 3 Comments

Today Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) will unveil its long-awaited server line, one of the building blocks that was still missing from their Unified Computing vision. This announcement is bound to shake up the IT industry in general, and the x86 server market in particular. Even though this market has several well established players like IBM, Dell, HP and to a lesser extent Sun, Cisco is determined to extend its already impressive datacenter footprint to this market as well.

What Cisco CEO John Chambers called “Datacenter 3.0” during his keynote at VMworld back in september 2007 has now been rebranded as “Unified Computing”. Different name, same concept.

Cisco emphasises that this is a big new concept, where the most important part is the (unified) network and the integrated management. We suppose the traditional server manufacturers beg to differ.

Without further ado, we’ve got the scoop on the juicy details:

  • Cisco California blade servers come in a new chassis (unlike for example Intel, whose now defunct Enterprise Blade Server line consisted of rebranded IBM kit).
  • The chassis has 8 slots, that can fit 8 half-width or 4 full-width blades. At the bottom of the chassis there are 4 power modules, on both sides there are two “FEX”es, or Fabric Extenders.
  • Each of the 8 slots has got a 10 Gb connection to one of the two Fabric Extenders.
  • The blades come in two models, both with two sockets, populated with Intel Xeon CPU’s based on the Core i7 (“Nehalem“) microarchitecture. The half-width blades have got 12 memory slots, the full-width have a whopping 48 memory banks. By leveraging the next generation Intel architecture, this allows for an unmatched memory density, which has traditionally been the bottleneck in virtualized environments. (Providing 384 Gb requires crazy expensive 8 Gb dimms. Using cheaper 4 Gb dimms still allows for an impressive 192 Gb of memory per blade.)
  • There are no dedicated management or switching modules in the chassis. The FEXes connect to the UCS 6100 (UCS = Unified Computing Switch), which is based on the Nexus 5020 switch. The UCS6100 is a “top of rack” switch that will carry the TCP/IP data, block level data (through FCoE) and the management of the system. By externalizing this management and switching, Cisco makes it easier to upgrade their chassis to new technologies later on, and it keeps as much of the environment as possible close to the network core, their traditional turf, treating the server as a commodity. The UCS communicates with a management chip on each blade to manage and monitor the server components. This management solution was co-developed with BMC.

Cisco will undoubtedly emphasise how this is a solution, based on a network architecture. As Christopher Hoff puts it at his Rational Security blog: It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but it’s a solution.

Now, how will the market react to this announcement is unknown. HP, IBM and the likes pretend to be unimpressed by their new competitor, but it’s worth noting Cisco might be on to something:

  • The more customers use virtualization, the more they need central management whereas the underlying servers become interchangeable building blocks. By integrating the management in the network switching, Cisco can reinforce their stronghold in the heart of the datacenter.
  • Cisco is a new player. They arent’ experienced in the server market, but they also could start designing their solution from the ground up, learning from mistakes made by their competitors. Expect them to try to silence potential criticts with a global service organisation (in partnership with Accenture and local partners), reference customers (Savvis is named to be a beta customer) and certifications by the likes of VMware, Oracle and SAP.
  • Fiber Channel and Ethernet are on a path to convergence. Storage vendors are preparing or shipping FCoE-capable arrays. (It’s likely EMC and/or NetApp will show up at the announcement later today.) Brocade, Cisco’s biggest competitor in the SAN market, knows this as well, but their aqcuisition of Foundry Networks was delayed by some shareholders. Their product lines will likely stay separate for several quarters to come, whilst Cisco is shipping a unified product line today.
  • Cisco is alienating their current partners like IBM and HP. This was inevitable however, as HP was already moving into Cisco’s market with their ProCurve switches, IBM has always courted multiple brides, and is now intensifying its relationship with Juniper. In a down economy, it’s everyone to himself. It is also the opportunity for challengers to enter new markets. Cisco has got a $30 billion piggy bank, a result of their average 65% margins. They can afford a fight, and we’re likely to see one, no matter how hard IBM, HP and even Cisco want to downplay the significance of this announcement.

It’s obvious VMware is involved in this play as well. They’ve been talking about the “software mainframe” for quite a while now, Chambers introduced “Datacenter 3.0” at VMworld in 2007, and Cisco is a minority shareholder in VMware.

Update: VMware has already put out its press release and a YouTube video in which CEO Paul Maritz talks about Unified computing.
Update: The Cisco press release is out as well.
Pictures are over at Flickr, and in the data sheet.

Cisco has published a full list of partners:

  • Accenture
  • BMC
  • EMC
  • Intel
  • Microsoft
  • NetApp
  • Novell
  • Red Hat
  • VMware

Stay tuned for the Cisco announcement later today. The webcast starts at 10:30 AM Pacific Time, 18:30 CET. You can tune in at Cisco.com.

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: california, Cisco, cisco california, Cisco Systems, cisco unified computing, details, exclusive, Featured, network, Platform, unified computing, virtualisation, virtualization

Breaking: Diane Greene Leaves VMware, Paul Maritz To Become CEO and President

July 8, 2008 by Robin Wauters 13 Comments

VMware co-founder Diane Greene (see BusinessWeek profile) has been ousted as president and chief executive of the company and will be replaced by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz (we reported on him joining EMC’s cloud computing division earlier this year), effective immediately. The company also said that while it “is not updating guidance for the second quarter, we expect revenues for the full year of 2008 will be modestly below the previous guidance of 50% growth over 2007.” The mean estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial was for 51% growth to $2 billion.

Shares of the virtualization software maker went tumbling in recent trading. The stock was recently down 24.3% to $40.26 a share. Shares have fallen by two-thirds the past eight months. The stock went public at $29 and rocketed in its first two months of trading to as high as $125 a share.

On Fortune.com’s Go West blog, Adam Lashinsky writes that VMware “was so loved by investors that it singlehandedly drove the valuation of EMC, whose best move this decade may have been buying VMware before it had the opportunity to go public the first time.”

Things change. VMware stock is falling big time since the news got out.

It’s highly likely that EMC has replaced Diane Greene because of the poor revenue outlook. Also worth noting is that we reported a rumor earlier today about VMware possibly being fully spun out of EMC (which now becomes highly unlikely, considering Paul Maritz’ track record).

We’ll post more details as soon as they’re available. We’re wondering how the VMware troops will react on the news, and what will happen with Mendel Rosenblum, Chief Scientist at VMware and Greene’s husband.

This is the official take from the company’s chairman, Joe Tucci:

“As one of the founders and the leader of VMware, Diane guided the creation and development of a company that is changing the way that people think about computing,” Tucci said in the statement. “The Board thanks her for her considerable contributions to VMware and wishes her every success in the future.”

Reuters has a comment from Jefferies and Co analyst Katherine Egbert, who was disappointed the company did not hold a conference call to explain why it was cutting its revenue forecast.

“She said she suspects VMware is concerned that sales of its server virtualization software will get squeezed by new competition from Microsoft, which late last month started selling a rival product. Microsoft introduced that product, which costs far less than VMware’s offering, six weeks ahead of its previously announced launch date.”

Update: VMwareVideos reminded us of this video of Diane Greene talking about VMworld.

They also found this one featuring the new CEO and President, Paul Maritz, an ex-Microsoft Corp executive, reflecting on what it’s like to have Bill Gates review your stuff.

[Source: MarketWatch]

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: Diane Greene, Featured, Paul Maritz, virtualisation, virtualization, vmware

NComputing Debuts X350

April 2, 2008 by Robin Wauters 12 Comments

NComputing has added another offering to its X-series product line. The new X350 is designed specifically for organizations that want to economically and efficiently add users for the lowest cost and best performance.

Built to accommodate popular slim-line PCs, the X350 kit, with a list price of $249, turns one PC into four virtual desktops – each delivering rich multimedia performance and full-screen video. With a second X350 kit, a total of seven users can share a single PC. The X350 is a lower-cost, low-profile version of the highly successful NComputing X550, which supports up to 11 users on a full-sized PC. And like all NComputing solutions, the X350 features the award-winning NComputing vSpace desktop virtualization software.

The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications use only a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing enables a single PC to be virtualized so that many users can tap the unused capacity and share it as if each person had their own computer. Each user enjoys a full PC experience by connecting their own monitor, keyboard and mouse to an NComputing device, which is then connected to the shared PC. Each X350 kit contains three NComputing XD2 devices and a low-profile PCI card that fits inside space-saving computers. Unlike other desktop virtualization solutions, the patented and highly-efficient X350 delivers rich multimedia and full-screen video.

The X350 is available now from thousands of resellers around the globe. In less than two years, NComputing has sold more than one million seats, making it the largest provider of ultra-low-cost computing solutions. NComputing’s simplicity and ease of use have contributed to rapid worldwide acceptance: anyone with basic PC skills can install an NComputing solution and the savings are immediate. Over 40,000 organizations in 140 countries have deployed NComputing to slash their computing costs and electric consumption. Each access device uses just one watt of electricity, compared to 110 for a standalone PC, making NComputing the greenest computing solution on earth.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: desktop virtualization, Featured, NComputing, NComputing vSpace, ncomputing x550, virtualisation, virtualization, vSpace, x-series, x350, x350 kit

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