HP

Citrix Pushes Embedding XenServer With Extended OEM Incentive Program

July 2, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Citrix has extended its Citrix Advisor Rewards program today to pay channel partners on sales of Citrix XenServer software that ships as an embedded feature in servers from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like HP.

The program, originally introduced in 2004, pays Citrix Solution Advisors for designing and delivering solutions based on Citrix application delivery products, even if a different channel partner ultimately fulfills the order. Extending the program to include embedded versions of XenServer eliminates any potential channel conflict with OEM partners and ensures strong incentives across the board by compensating partners that influence embedded XenServer deals as well as those who fulfill them.

Citrix has announced several OEM agreements in recent months to embed XenServer in servers from systems vendors such as HP. As a result of today’s announcement, the Citrix Advisor Rewards program now pays channel partners on sales of these products, effectively eliminating potential channel conflict and focusing the extensive expertise of Citrix Solution Advisors on delivering the best possible solutions to customers.

“Customers want to implement virtualization with reduced risk, and HP understands that the channel is essential to meeting those requirements,” said Scott Farrand, vice president, Industry Standard Server Software, HP. “Citrix’s new channel program enables partners to offer a comprehensive virtualization solution that integrates the power of HP ProLiant servers with the rich functionality of the Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition from a single, reliable source.”

Breaking: Veeam Software Acquires nworks

June 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Veeam Software, known for virtualization management tools and its FastSCP file management freeware for VMware environments, has acquired nworks, a maker of “enterprise management connectors” that link VMware virtual infrastructure tools and enterprise systems management tools from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

“Our customers have been asking to manage their physical and virtual infrastructures through a single console, and many of them have significant investments in HP OpenView and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager,” says Ratmir Timashev, Veeam president and CEO (also see our video interview with him at the latest VMworld Europe).

Veeam’s new lineup of product offerings will include backup, reporting and monitoring tools as well as Veeam Configurator, which manages VMware configurations from a Windows interface; nworks Smart Plug-In for VMware for HP Software Operations Manager, which incorporates VMware management into HP OpenView; and nworks Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, which incorporates VMware management into Microsoft SCOM.

HP And VMware Tighten Partnership With Deeper Software Integration

June 19, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

HP today announced it is expanding its strategic collaboration with VMware to introduce new integrated software offerings that help customers seamlessly automate the management of heterogeneous environments.

New integrations of HP business technology optimization (BTO) software for the VMware virtualization platform aims to allow customers to seamlessly manage across both physical and virtual environments.

The offerings include:

HP Business Service Management – monitoring of physical and virtual environments. Products include HP Business Availability Center, HP Operations Center and HP Network Management Center.
HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping and HP Universal CMDB – discovery of virtualized environments and accurate tracking and reporting of changes.
HP Business Service Automation – automation of change processes across virtual and physical environments. Products include HP Server Automation Center, HP Client Automation and HP Operations Orchestration.

In addition, HP has worked with VMware to make software bundles available that combine the VMware Infrastructure 3 software suite and additional automation products with HP Insight Control Environment. These bundles offer customers comprehensive and seamless physical and virtual platform management.

HP also announced that its VMware Authorized Training Center (VATC) is the first to train more than 10,000 students on VMware certifying courses required for the VMware Certified Professional exam. All VATCs offer education programs using VMware-certified instructors and course materials. With the combination of HP’s global presence, remote training delivery infrastructure and expertise with the VMware platform, HP Education Services offers effective education programs for the broad range of VMware products.

“VMware and HP are working together to make virtual environments easier to manage and to get more professionals trained to implement our joint solutions,” said Brian Byun, vice president, Global Partners and Solutions, VMware. “We’re embracing and extending management and automation products from both companies to provide comprehensive solutions for managing the reality of customer environments with a mix of both virtual and physical systems. By collaborating with HP, we hope to bring to market additional management solutions that simplify these environments for our customers.”

Gartner: Server Market Still Growing, Despite Virtualization

May 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Just recently, Gartner published a report showing that the server market did great during all of 2007, including the fourth quarter. Server shipments rose 11 % during the fourth quarter, while revenue rose almost 3 %.

The analyst firm has now proclaimed server sales and shipments also showed strong growth in the first quarter of this year compared to last year despite continued growth of the use of server virtualization technology. Jeffrey Hewitt, VP Research at Gartner said that certain factors are “masking” the impact of server virtualization.

“A lot of the growth in physical server sales is coming from an explosion in the use of certain applications such as Web servers, which often do not lend themselves to being virtualized. Also, server virtualization is still much more accepted in mature markets such as the US, Europe, and Australia, and less adopted in fast-growing markets such as China. Additionally, customers are not running server virtualization on old hardware. Customers are buying larger servers to host virtualization. This market is so hungry for more and more horsepower. Virtualization makes it easier to host more and faster applications.”

Gartner on Thursday said that a total of 2.3 million servers were sold in the first quarter, up about 7.6 percent over the 2.1 million shipped during the same quarter last year. Revenue growth was not as strong, however. Vendors sold $13.6 billion worth of servers during the quarter, up only 4.3 percent compared to the $13.0 billion in server sales last year, Gartner said.

HP was the world’s top server vendor during the first quarter of 2008, accounting for 30.1 percent of the total worldwide shipments. Fast growth in server shipments by Dell, which boasts a 22.7 percent market share, puts that company within striking range of the top position. Dell’s shipments grew 15.8 percent over last year compared to HP’s growth of 7.8 percent.

Worldwide RISC-based and Itanium- based server shipments slipped 8.4 percent compared to last year, with all top five vendors seeing a drop in sales. However, revenue for this class of servers grew 3.7 percent over last year, with all top five vendors seeing revenue growth except for Sun, which saw revenue drop as its Solaris Unix-based focus continues to shift more towards x86-based servers, Hewitt said.

Shipments of servers with the Linux OS grew the fastest year-over-year, up 13.9 percent compared to the 6.8 percent growth of shipments of servers with Windows, Hewitt said. However, the overall base of Linux-based servers is still only half that of Windows-based servers, so in terms of absolute numbers, Windows- based server shipments grew faster.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

HP & Virtualization: New Thin Client Hardware, Extended Software Offerings, Deeper Partnerships With Citrix and VMware

May 19, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

HP today introduced the new HP 2533t Mobile Thin Client, which it claims combines “the best of HP’s industry-leading thin client and business notebook technologies to enhance data security and improve both ease of use and reliability”.

The company also plans to expand its Remote Graphics Software technology. HP RGS supports a remote, yet collaborative work model that helps overcome the distance barriers that can impede global organizations and delivers to remote client environments rich, local desktop-like user experiences. With HP RGS, professionals can work together, from any physical location with Internet access, and make decisions in real-time with more secure access to multimedia content including flash animations, video, hardware accelerated 2D and 3D applications.

The HP 2533t provides enhanced access to virtual computing solutions, such as blade PCs or a virtual desktop infrastructure, and increased protection of corporate data and software applications by storing files on a secure, centralized server. No data resides on the actual mobile thin client, so companies should be assured that data is not compromised in the event the client is lost or stolen.

In addition, HP announced its full portfolio of Citrix-Ready thin clients and blade client products is now available with Citrix XenDesktop, as well as being certified by VMware for compatibility with its VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

“Today’s news is the latest example of HP’s building momentum in the client virtualization market,” said Roberto Moctezuma, vice president and general manager, Desktop Solutions Organization, HP. “We’re offering businesses a one-stop shop to meet their virtualization needs with the most comprehensive portfolio of virtual client solutions, ease of management and the highest levels of IT security.”

HP thin clients are now certified for the Citrix XenDesktop appliance program across the line, with the HP Compaq t5730 Thin Client delivering the “Desktop Appliance Plus” experience and verified Citrix-Ready for Citrix Password Manager, Citrix XenApp (Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 & 4.5), Citrix XenDesktop and an embedded Desktop Receiver.

“With the availability of XenDesktop, Citrix uniquely delivers virtual desktops that dramatically reduce the cost of ownership for IT, while providing a superior user experience for knowledge workers,” said Raj Dhingra, vice president and general manager, Desktop Delivery Group, Citrix Systems. “We are excited to be demonstrating the results of our collaboration at Synergy 2008. The Citrix and HP relationship enables enterprises to quickly implement and manage a best-of-breed client virtualization solution from the data center to the desktop.”

Today’s expansion of the HP virtualization portfolio also extends the recently introduced ProLiant iVirtualization joint venture with Citrix, VMware and Microsoft, which uses customers’ existing server management tools to integrate virtualization technology directly into a broad range of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem platforms.

Last Week’s Virtualization Headlines

May 18, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

We apologize for the limited reporting of last week, and we just wanted to let you know we’re going to pick up our usual pace as of today. For now, these are the most apparent stories we came across with regards to what happened in virtualization land:

Virtual Iron and Surgient both lost key marketing executives. Mike Grandinetti, who had been working for Virtual Iron since 2003 (see our video interview with Mike at VMWorld Europe 2008), has moved on to become Managing Director of Southboro Capital, presumably his own venture. Similar story at Surgient, who saw the leave of VP of Marketing Erik Josowitz who had been with the start-up since 2004. No word on what Josowitz is up to next.
Quest Software reported (PDF) its 2008 Q1 results. Total revenues increased to $172.8 million compared to the prior year’s first quarter revenue of $149.8 million.
Parallels has updated Parallels Desktop to build 5600. With the update, the company has added full support for Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, and improved compatibility with the MacBook Air, along with some minor bugfixes and performance enhancements.
Stealth startup DynamicOps, a venture-funded spinout of management technology developed by Credit Suisse’s research and development organization, launched its virtual machine management application Virtual Resource Manager.
HP joined Desktone‘s Service Provider Partner Program.
VMware announced that VMware Site Recovery Manager, a product for disaster recovery management and automation, will be available for order this week with general availability expected to follow within 30 days. Both 3PAR and NetApp have already announced integration / support for VMware SRM.
Check Point Software Technologies announced the general availability of ZoneAlarm ForceField, which it claims to be a comprehensive, virtualized browser security solution.
AMD announced enterprise customers now have more choices for rack-mount and blade systems based upon Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors with the launch of six new servers from Sun Microsystems.
EMC could very well be planning to sell off all or part of its majority stake in VMware, a rumor spread by Bloomberg. EMC will be able to do a tax-free distribution of shares in January 2009, and some are already citing Intel as a potential acquirer of the assets.