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Actifio Names Former IBM System Storage VP Jim Sullivan As President

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Actifio today announced that Jim Sullivan has been named president.

In this role, Sullivan leads go-to-market activities for Actifio as it establishes leadership in an entirely new class of storage.

Most recently, Sullivan was vice president, worldwide sales, IBM System Storage.

Actifio has pioneered the industry’s first storage system optimized for managing copies of production data, eliminating redundant silos of IT infrastructure and data management applications.

Prior to it being acquired by IBM, Sullivan served as president of XIV, a market leader of next generation storage arrays.

Sullivan also had an outstanding 12-year tenure at EMC where he executed one of the storage industry’s fastest growths in sales, holding numerous leadership positions and culminating in the role of senior vice president of sales. Sullivan also served on the Board at AppIQ (acquired by HP) and Diligent (acquired by IBM), and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization devoted to the professional and personal growth of business leaders around the world.

By introducing virtualization into data management, Actifio delivers an application-centric, SLA-driven solution that decouples the management of data from storage, network and server infrastructure and reduces costs by 10X. Actifio is proving to be the best data management solution for the virtual server environment and is being rapidly deployed in VMware environments.

IBM Buys System Software Company Platform Computing

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IBM yesterday announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Platform Computing, a privately held company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Platform Computing offers cluster and grid management software for distributed computing environments.

The acquisition is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2011, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Platform Computing management software helps clients create, integrate and manage shared computing environments that are used in resource-intensive applications such as simulations, computer modeling and analytics. These technical and high performance computing (HPC) applications fuel product development, critical business decisions and breakthrough science in financial services, manufacturing, digital media, oil and gas, life sciences, government, and research and education.

Platform Computing currently serves over 2,000 clients including 23 of the top 30 largest global enterprises. Example customers include CERN, Citigroup, Infineon, Pratt & Whitney, Red Bull Racing, Sanger Institute, Statoil and University of Tokyo.

Platform Computing’s operations as of the closing will be integrated into IBM Systems and Technology Group.

Platform Computing has approximately 500 employees worldwide.

HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat And Others Form Open Virtualization Alliance

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BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE yesterday announced the formation of the Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium committed to fostering the adoption of open virtualization technologies including Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

The consortium will promote examples of customer successes, encourage interoperability and accelerate the expansion of the ecosystem of third party solutions around KVM, providing businesses improved choice, performance and price for virtualization.

The Open Virtualization Alliance will also provide education, best practices and technical advice to help businesses understand and evaluate their virtualization options.

The consortium complements the existing open source communities managing the development of the KVM hypervisor and associated management capabilities, which are driving technology innovations for customers virtualizing both Linux and Windows applications.

Members of the Open Virtualization Alliance have a common interest in supporting open virtualization, and are involved in the development, distribution, support, use, or other business interest in KVM or offerings which use it. By providing an open virtualization alternative, they are offering their clients choice and enabling them to select the ideal virtualization products for their business needs.

Red Hat And IBM Join Forces To Advance ‘Open Virtualization’

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Red Hat and IBM recently announced that they are working together to make products and solutions based on KVM technology. Together, the companies are driving adoption of the open source virtualization technology through joint development projects and enablement of the KVM ecosystem.

KVM open source virtualization technology allows a business to create multiple virtual versions of Linux and Windows environments on the same server.

KVM-based products and solutions, incorporating comprehensive management capabilities and scaling from local servers to large public clouds, help businesses save money by consolidating and sharing IT resources without the expense and limitations of a proprietary solution.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, designed to enable pervasive datacenter virtualization, combines a centralized virtualization management system with advanced features as well as a KVM-based hypervisor.

Planned areas of collaboration between Red Hat and IBM include increasing the scope and adoption of the Red Hat Virtualization Management APIs, and building a community to encourage the use of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager APIs by third-party virtualization products.

Together, the companies will also drive adoption of the open source virtualization technology through jointly developing key virtualization and cloud management interfaces and using the APIs in their respective management products, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager, IBM Director and Tivoli software.

The APIs will address cloud, datacenter automation, virtual storage and networking, virtualization security and virtual appliance management.

IBM Pumps $38 Million In Cloud Computing Data Center To Address Asia Pacific Growth

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IBM recently announced a $38M investment in a new IBM Asia Pacific Cloud Computing Data Center in Singapore, which will provide businesses with solutions and services to harness the potential of cloud computing.

The new facility will extend IBM’s globally-integrated cloud delivery network with centres in Germany, Canada and the United States; and 13 global cloud labs, of which seven are based in Asia Pacific – China, India, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore.

Scheduled to launch in April, the Centre will make available IBM’s cloud services and technology portfolio via the company’s cloud delivery infrastructure. T

hese services are designed to enable clients to reap the benefits of business and IT transformation; increase flexibility and agility; accelerate time to market; reduce costs; and increase security and compliance of public cloud environments.

The first offering to be available at the IBM Asia Pacific Cloud Computing Data Centre will be from IBM’s infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud portfolio.

It helps enterprises reduce operational costs; eliminate capital outlays; improve cycle times for faster time-to-market; and improve quality with virtually instant, secure access to a standardized infrastructure as a service environment.

Salesforce.com Appoints Jeff Lautenbach As SVP Enterprise Commercial Sales, Americas

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Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com has appointed Jeff Lautenbach as senior vice president of enterprise commercial sales, Americas. Lautenbach reports to Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, executive vice president of sales, Salesforce.com.

Lautenbach joins Salesforce.com following a 20-year career at IBM. Most recently, he was responsible for its software business in the Western part of the U.S. where he led an organization of more than 1,000 professionals with software sales, technical, and architecture responsibilities focused on selling to the largest enterprises in the U.S. market.

Lautenbach earned a B.A. in Marketing from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and a MBA from the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois.