Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

stealth

Wanova Leaves Stealth Mode With $13 Million In Series A Funding

by Leave a Comment

Wanova has exited stealth mode and launched a “new era in desktop virtualization” with $13 million in A-round funding from Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Opus Capital.

Founded by experienced entrepreneurs, the company has launched an architecture called Distributed Desktop Virtualization (DDV), which addresses the need for enterprises to improve the management, support and protection of distributed endpoints.

Wanova’s new architecture is designed specifically to address the endpoint management challenges presented by distributed remote and mobile workers. The Wanova DDV solution centralizes the entire desktop contents in the data center for management and protection purposes while distributing the execution of desktop workloads to the endpoints for superior user experience.

The founders of Wanova – Kessler and CTO, Dr. Issy Ben-Shaul – also co-founded Actona, which was acquired by Cisco and became the foundation for Cisco’s Application Delivery Business Unit. Prior to founding Actona, Kessler was vice president and general manager for Qualcomm Israel and a research staff member at IBM in New York.

Ben-Shaul was the CTO of the Application Delivery Business Unit at Cisco and led its technology and vision. Prior to Actona, he was a tenured faculty member at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where he worked on wide area distributed systems.

Wanova is headquartered in San Jose, California with a development center in Netanya, Israel. The company’s solutions are currently in field testing with customers.

(via Venturebeat)

Unisys Debuts Secure Cloud Solution

by Leave a Comment

Unisys today announced that the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution recently became available to clients. This solution enables enterprise clients to securely move conventional business applications – including those with secure or sensitive data, such as human resources, financial, customer and healthcare information – into a managed, shared cloud service without costly, time-consuming rewrites or other alterations.

The Unisys Secure Cloud Solution is a core component of Unisys cloud computing strategy, which enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives, from self-managed private clouds to Unisys-managed cloud services as well as hybrid solutions.

The Secure Cloud Solution integrates Unisys patent-pending Stealth data protection technology, which cloaks data from detection as it moves through the network. As a result, clients in a multi-tenant environment can share the same IT infrastructure without fear of compromising the security of their data. (Unisys also plans to release a Stealth solution for storage area networks to provide the same cloaking capability for “data at rest.”)

Assessing Unisys cloud computing strategy and Secure Cloud Solution, and the value that the Stealth technology brings, The 451 Group analyst William Fellows wrote, “Establishing a strict chain of custody for data will be a key requirement for running more sensitive workloads in the cloud.”

As a managed public cloud service, Unisys Secure Cloud Solution enables global delivery of multiple new services: Secure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Secure Platform as a Service (PaaS), My Secure Application as a Service (AaaS), and three Secure Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings: Secure Unified Communication as a Service, Secure Virtual Office as a Service and Secure Document Delivery Service.

The Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, which is based on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standard for service management, uses the automation and virtualization capabilities of Unisys real-time infrastructure solutions. Drawing on technologies from key partners as well as Unisys, these solutions enable an organization’s IT infrastructure to respond automatically to changes in the business environment.

Unisys worked closely with Intel to develop the computing architecture that powers the Secure Cloud Solution and collaborated with EMC, drawing on that partner’s storage technology to create the information infrastructure that enables fast storage and delivery of information securely in the cloud. Software from partners Scalent Systems and Enigmatec Corporation enables repurposing and orchestration of IT resources to meet the service levels required for clients’ business.

Unisys Converged Remote Infrastructure Management solution provides end-to-end operations capabilities for the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution. Based on software from BMC Software, the Converged Remote Infrastructure Management capability gives clients a single view of their infrastructure, managing the cloud from the cloud and enabling them to seamlessly integrate request, change, configuration, incident and availability management into their existing service management infrastructure.

A self-service portal enables clients of Unisys Secure Cloud Solution to scale IT resources in real time to meet fluctuating business requirements.

As client needs or data security requirements dictate, the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution can balance workloads across a global network of Unisys data centers certified to key international standards for security and service management. Through these centers, clients can both benefit from Unisys global and local service delivery expertise and comply with laws requiring storage of sensitive business data in-country while leveraging Unisys layered security infrastructure.

A portfolio of Unisys Cloud Transformation Services, also available now, complements the Secure Cloud Solution. These advisory and implementation services assist clients in assessing potential cloud computing options and determining which best suits their needs or financial objectives; modernizing their IT and application environments; and, through the cloud, enhancing productivity while lowering costs and safeguarding their data.

Delivered by a force of more than 800 Unisys consultants worldwide, these Cloud Transformation Services are designed to accelerate clients’ realization of value from cloud solutions.

Stealth Memory Virtualization Startup RNA Networks Slated For Launch

by Leave a Comment

NetworkWorld brings us the news of stealth startup RNA Networks, which says it will “offer technology that aggregates memory and shares it across servers, improving performance of online transaction processing and clustered or grid computing.”

From their websites:

RNA networks brings memory virtualization into the enterprise data center.

RNA delivers the consolidation and dramatic cost savings of virtualization for business critical applications. In addition, RNA’s Memory Virtualization Platform (MVP) delivers breakthrough performance at scale, reliably and efficiently.

Memory Virtualization profoundly changes everything about business aligned IT, from economics to use cases.  RNA transforms the data center into a high performance asset where virtualization is fully adopted.  With RNA, your business performance is accelerated.

RNA is reportedly slated for launch in the beginning of February 2008.

Replicate Technologies Leaves Stealth Mode

by Leave a Comment

Replicate Technologies is leaving stealth mode today with the launch of its first product, Replicate Datacenter Analyzer (RDA). You can get a free trial here.

Their website says:

RDA enables datacenter administrators to prevent downtime by providing predictive fault identification and prescriptive guidance for fault resolution. Available as an OVF virtual appliance for VMWare Infrastructure 3, you can be up and running in less than 30 minutes.

Key features of RDA 1.0 include:

  • Active Discovery – which deploys virtual appliances to discover and model the combined virtual and physical datacenter systems, assessing the unified infrastructure for configuration fault issues using more than 20 pre-packaged analyses for datacenter security, resiliency and connectivity.
  • Predictive Analysis – which discovers and diagnoses latent issues in the unified datacenter using a catalog of Knowledge Modules that encode best practice and expert guidance for the resolution of identified faults.
  • Resolution Guidance – which delivers expert guidance, based on RDA’s Knowledge Modules, in the form of drill-down analysis which highlights the root problem, in order to quickly identify and prioritize important issues and expedite repair.
  • Knowledge Modules – which includes modules covering Ethernet which can prove security isolation and validate resiliency in physical and virtual environments; Host Configuration for service console firewall, iSCSI NIC and physical cabling; and, VM migration for maintenance mode, hot and cold migration and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) mobility. The catalog of Knowledge Modules will be continually expanded and updated.

Stealth “Laptop Virtualization” Company Virtual Computer Readying Launch

by 1 Comment

Mass High Tech is reporting on a new virtualization startup, currently in stealth mode, who is readying a public launch in the field of ‘laptop virtualization’ (for lack of a better term).

Update – per their blog: they’ve launched.

Westford-based Old Road Computing plans to publicly launch as Virtual Computer Inc., but isn’t revealing many specifics about its virtualization product, nor when it will be released. The company was founded in 2007 by Alex Vasilevsky (ex-CTO and founder of Virtual Iron) and Dan McCall (former Verisign executive and well-known consultant), both 25+ year veterans of the Boston technology community. The company is funded by top tier investors including Highland Capital Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners (formerly IDG Ventures, Boston). To date, it has raised $6 million in a Series A round of financing.

The software would be designed to isolate a laptop’s four major components — hardware, operating system, applications and user data — and create versions on the laptop of those components that operate remotely, without a network connection. The software would operate transparently for the user and it would enable wholesale security updates and other types of upgrades when connected to the network. Isolating the portions of the system enables it to limit access to work-related applications while enabling users to install their own personal preferences on the device.

Virtual Computer (blog) is targeting laptops because that segment is growing faster than stationary desktops, according to the company.

Will Unidesk Bring Anything New to the VDI Table?

by Leave a Comment

VMBlog is reporting that a new desktop virtualization management startup called Unidesk is about to break out of stealth mode. (note: the Unidesk website is still under construction as some titles and text snippets appear to be missing)

Founded in December of last year, Unidesk raised a total of $8.1 million this year from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. It has a strong management team, and recently opened up a second office in India next to their existing Marlborough offices. Their core offers are named “Composite Virtualization“ and “Desktop Management 2.0” and they claim it will dramatically simplify desktop management for enterprise IT organizations.

“Building on a core invention called Composite Virtualization™, Unidesk will offer IT organizations the desktop control they’ve been seeking to reduce costs, improve service levels, and tighten security, while, at the same time, give lines of business the desktop freedom they require to maximize knowledge worker innovation and productivity. Unidesk’s family of “Desktop Management 2.0™” solutions will provide the highly efficient image management, application delivery, and personalization capabilities that are currently missing from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products from VMware and Citrix, and extend these same capabilities to non-VDI-based laptops and thick desktops so IT can easily support off-network computing. By eliminating the barriers to VDI adoption and enabling all desktops to be virtualized under a common management platform, Unidesk’s game-changing technology will accelerate the multi-billion dollar desktop virtualization market, and deliver significant returns to employees, investors, customers, and business partners.”

There’s not much else we can gather from the website, apart from the fact that the company is planning a free trial version, and that they’re hiring a bunch of people who will get – at least- a free mug (see here).

Unidesk