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Parallels’ Marketing Director Ben Rudolph Moves To Microsoft (Updated)

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Ben RudolphBenjamin Rudolph, the charismatic Director of Marketing at Parallels (see the interview we had with him at VMworld Europe 2008), has apparently made the move to Redmond to help Microsoft with its forray into the virtualization arena, says Virtualization.info. Rudolph is still listed on several Parallels blogs and his LinkedIn profile still displays his position at Parallels, so this is a very recent development. We’ll update as soon as we can confirm what Rudolph’s plans are for the future.

Update: we’ve just received word from Ben that he will be leaving Parallels at the end of this month. His role at Microsoft will be heading Enterprise PR for Windows Vista.

Jenny Ellis, who formerly managed PR for Parallels in the UK will be replacing Rudolph as Worldwide PR Director.

Parallels Debuts Software Certification Program

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Parallels announced today the Parallels Certification Program, which enables software vendors to test their products and certify their compatibility with Parallels virtualization software. Product certification provides assurance to end users that popular ISV applications are supported and compatible with Parallels virtualization solutions.

Parallels

Certification is available for software vendors that want to assure compatibility with Parallels virtualization products, including Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, Parallels Desktop for Mac, Parallels Server and Parallels Workstation.

Software vendors can register for certification free of no charge by going to Product Certification Application Form. The Parallels Certified Products catalog includes more than 100 solutions that span many application types and includes applications such as SugarCRM and IBM DB2. To access the Parallels Certified Products catalog, go to Catalog page.

Last Week’s Virtualization Headlines

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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.

Parallels Desktop for Mac To Be Part Of Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription

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Last week, Parallels announced that its Parallels Desktop for Mac software will be made available as part of the Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription. The company claims this will enable millions of designers using Mac computers to use Microsoft’s Expression Studio to design desktop and web-based graphical interfaces.

“Including Parallels Desktop for Mac in the Microsoft Expression Subscription gives designers a valuable tool for working across platforms,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “It is further evidence of the productivity benefits that our virtualization software offers customers, and strengthens our ongoing partnership with Microsoft.”

The Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription is will be available from Microsoft in June 2008 and will cost $999 ERP.

In addition to the Parallels Desktop for Mac software, the Expression Professional Subscription includes:

  • Expression Studio
  • Visual Studio 2008 Standard
  • Office 2007 Standard
  • Windows XP SP2
  • Windows Vista Business Edition
  • Pre-configured virtualized server environments

For additional information, you’re invited to visit www.microsoft.com/expression.

[Source: VMBlog]

Parallels Server Reaches Beta 4 Build

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Parallels Server 3.0 Beta4 Build 1990 is now available for download. The build reintroduces Leopard Server virtualization, which had been temporarily removed. The upgraded beta means that Leopard Server can once again be run under a virtual machine on XServe systems, or any other compatible Apple hardware.

As a company employee posts in the Parallels forum, this is what’s new in Beta 4:

Virtualization Engine

  • Guest Mac OS X Leopard Server support (on top of Mac OS X Leopard Server only)
  • General performance improvement
  • Virtual machine density improvement

Virtual devices

  • Networking performance improvement

Server Infrastructure and User interface

  • Separate installer for Parallels Management Console for Linux included
  • Separate installer for Parallels SDK included

[Source: MacNN]

Absolute Performance Releases System Shepherd 5.0

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Absolute Performance yesterday announced the availability of System Shepherd version 5.0, performance management software SaaS applications. System Shepherd 5.0 brings the ability to instrument and manage application software operating in VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and Parallels virtualized environments.

Absolute Performance

The 5.0 release of System Shepherd adds the ability to look deep into the virtualization software hypervisor, giving insight into the performance of multiple applications, web servers, databases and operating systems running across a single or multiple virtual machines. System Shepherd quantifies the resource utilization of all the software operating within the virtualized environment, easing performance tuning and resource management of virtualized applications and software. System Shepherd supports VMware ESX hypervisor and will expand support to Parallels, Xen and Hyper-V in the coming months.
System Shepherd 5.0 is the foundation of Absolute’s suite of On Demand software solutions for managing software performance in software-as-a-service delivered applications, content and enterprise solutions. Version 5.0 brings a fully customizable dashboard based on the flexible, iGoogle-style web-based user interface.

Everything is configured through System Shepherd’s web interface, cutting installation time down to less than a day, even hours, as compared to the weeks, months and sometimes years to install on-premise enterprise management systems.

[Source: SYS-CON]