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Shavlik Technologies Releases NetChk Protect 6.5

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Shavlik Technologies, provider of solutions that accelerate and improve security and compliance readiness, today announced (PDF) the availability of Shavlik NetChk Protect 6.5. Shavlik NetChk Protect 6.5 is a virtual machine management solution that provides continuous patch assessment and remediation of your complete virtual world, including Offline Virtual Images.

Mark Shavlik, CEO, Shavlik Technologies:
“Shavlik’s market leading agentless technology makes it uniquely capable of reaching and securing offline virtual images, thereby allowing customers to simplify the entire security management process. This technology edge is why VMware selected Shavlik to license and integrate into its own solutions offering. Now we are bringing our full solution into our main product line, a key to the continued simplification of complex network security solutions we provide to our customers.”
NetChk Protect 6.5 extends Shavlik’s Any Patch/Any Where assessment technology to offline virtual images and fully automates continuous patch assessment and deployment which cuts costs and eases time constraints on overburdened IT staff. NetChk Protect 6.5 provides more powerful security through continuous identification and remediation of security gaps and redundant overlaps.

BMC Software Launches Virtualization Management Solutions In Partnership with Microsoft, Sun and VMware

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BMC Software today announced nine new, integrated solutions specifically designed to help customers eliminate the rising risk and operational expenses associated with inadequate management of virtualized IT environments.

The new solutions are grounded in a BMC-invented, highly automated set of Closed-Loop Change and Configuration Management (CLCCM) process workflows that reduce the latency, cost and risk associated with change management by as much as 75 percent.

BMC virtualization management solutions give customers a holistic, unified approach to IT planning, control, automation and management for today’s virtualized, multi-vendor IT environments.
BMC has extended its Service Assurance and Service Automation portfolios — key components of its leading Business Service Management (BSM) platform — to deliver virtualization-specific capabilities. The nine new offerings have been optimized to support goals for performance, compliance and enterprise visibility by addressing some of the most pressing challenges created by virtualization.
All of these new offerings are architected to support both virtual and physical infrastructures, further reducing cost and complexity by allowing IT operations organizations to use a single set of management solutions across their entire IT infrastructure.
As part of this new virtualization management offering, BMC has completed full solution integration with long-time partners Microsoft, Sun and VMware.

NetIQ Survey Results Reflect Lack of Virtualization Management Basics

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As the adoption rate of virtualization technology increases, organizations face new management challenges arising from hybrid physical and virtual infrastructures. While companies turn to virtualization to reduce IT expense and increase service capacity, a recent study conducted by NetIQ revealed that very few companies are taking the necessary steps to extend systems management basics to ensure application performance, service availability and end user experience across this complex hybrid environment. As a result, they risk offsetting the many benefits and ultimate cost savings virtualization technology promises.

Comprised of feedback from over 1,000 respondents within more than 800 different government, enterprise and small-to-medium organizations worldwide, only 21 percent of 759 respondents currently deploying virtualization have any kind of systems management solution for their virtual infrastructure. Overall, survey responses demonstrate that:

  • Approximately 27 percent are managing the performance and availability of their virtual systems with the same tools they utilize on their physical servers;
  • Just 17 percent are simply monitoring the virtual hardware or the operating system; and
  • Only 10 percent are proactively gauging end-user response time while 15 percent are simply considering it.

The survey also revealed that 40 percent of respondents are not reporting on the performance of their virtualized applications, hardware, operating systems, or their virtual machines in any measurable way. This prevents them from managing capacity, avoiding impending outages and collecting additional critical data that can help ensure business continuity.

By not extending application and end-user response time monitoring to virtual systems and hybrid environments, organizations have little visibility into IT service performance and limited accuracy in gauging an end users’ experience with those services. This limits the ability of IT to fulfill service level agreements (SLAs), threatens process continuity and minimizes the potential return on virtualization investments.

NetIQ

Platform Computing Releases VM Orchestrator 4

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Platform Computing has announced the next version of its virtual environment management product for the enterprise data center, Platform VM Orchestrator (VMO) 4. Platform VMO 4 provides faster delivery of virtual computer environments to end users while optimizing resource utilization, availability, and power consumption, to improve an enterprise’s return on investment from its virtualization environment. The solution offers a cost-effective enterprise virtualization management solution for Citrix XenServer, with support for virtualization platforms from other vendors to be delivered in the coming months.

Platform says VMO 4 increases IT productivity and responsiveness to business service levels through a Self-Service portal that supports delegated administration and allows end users to request and control usage of their own VMs without administrator involvement. At the core of VMO’s automated management is the multi-host dynamic resource management engine, which increases resource utilization across the virtual environment to remove bottlenecks and server silos according to flexible configurable policies that map to business priorities.

Platform VMO 4 will be available later this month.

Platform Computing

Symantec Acquires nSuite Technologies, Moves Into Endpoint Virtualization Management

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NetworkWorld is reporting that Symantec has agreed to acquire nSuite Technologies, a small firm specializing in virtualization solutions for the healthcare industry, for an undisclosed amount in cash. Symantec aims to build out its portfolio of virtualization security and management technologies.

nSuite makes software called PrivacyShell Virtual Workspace Management, which is primarily used by hospitals for secure desktop management on behalf of physicians and medical staff. The nSuite software works to create a container around an individual’s authorized applications and data. When a user is authenticated, the user’s applications and data can quickly be ported to the Windows-based desktop where the individual is working, and later removed. PrivacyShell Virtual Workspace Management balances centralized control with the flexibility needed to provide tailored user environments. It leverages virtualization and authentication technologies to optimize the way hospitals deliver and manage end user workspaces.

After the nSuite acquisition is completed, which is expected this month, Symantec anticipates integrating the nSuite software with its Altiris SVS and AppStream management consoles in the future. It will announce product updates at ManageFusion, a hands-on lab and training event held in various cities worldwide.

nSuite Technologies

BlueBear Says Kodiak and Koala Can Unchain Virtualization from Data Centers

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We’re going to let you discover what the Washington-based startup BlueBear is trying to do with Koala (“the world’s smallest, most powerful virtualization-ready server”) and Kodiak (“the industry’s only application that’s both hypervisor-agnostic and cross-platform”) for yourself on their fun and informative website.

Here’s the takeaway:

Kodiak is largely built on Adobe AIR, is deployable on Windows, Mac and Linux, provides native support for VMware and Xen servers (Hyper-V support planned), comes with a visual map user interface, and allows unlimited consoles. Not only is it free of cost, its soon to be shared SDK coupled with Adobe’s Flex IDE allows high extensibility for end-user customization. Watch the teaser video here.

We’d use it if only for the fun names and cool website copywriting (“written and optimized from scratch by actual bears, …”), but unfortunately, it’s invite-only so far.

[Source: Flex RIA]