Kace announced today what it calls the first virtual systems management appliances to run natively within the VMware infrastructure. Kace’s Virtual Kbox appliances offer users a software product that runs on the user’s existing hardware. Earlier versions of the Kbox appliance required the installation of separate hardware to deploy and manage IT resources.
The Virtual Kbox appliances family is now shipping and fully supports physical and virtual machines across Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris environments.
“Unlike a generation of virtual appliances preceding it, the Virtual Kbox family provides a systems management and deployment solution that is fully integrated from a highly optimized and hardened operating system through an easy-to-use, Web-based application,” Rob Meinhardt, cofounder and CEO of Kace, told TechNewsWorld.
The virtual appliance aims at delivering the benefits of a hardware appliance, including fast deployment times with low costs and ease of use. It also provides the benefits of virtualization, such as improved resource utilization, reduced energy and cost savings, improved maintainability and support and the ability to quickly scale. While the product’s name implies that it is an actual hardware device, it is a software product that runs on the customer’s computer. The virtual appliance product will do all that a physical appliance will do, he said. It provides the full range of features found in physical appliance management devices.
Virtualization is exploding in popularity in many enterprise categories. Organizations are seeking new ways to leverage this technology, also according to Meinhardt. “We’ve seen an incredible ramping up for virtualization. This gave us an opportunity to deliver our Kbox products for virtual appliance management,” said Lubos Parobek, Senior Director of Product Management for Kace.
Kace, which started in 2003, is targeting companies with from 100 to 1 000 employees. It currently has 450 customers worldwide, mostly in the SMB category, according to CEO Rob Meinhardt.”That gives us up to 100 000 companies worldwide as potential users,” he said.
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[Source: TechNewsWorld]