virtualization management

Qlusters Shuts Down

July 1, 2008 by Kris Buytaert 3 Comments

Israel business site Globes Online got the scoop about Qlusters closing shop after seven years in business. The last 30 employees of the company were informed earlier this week of the company’s decision.

Qlusters, the company formerly behind the openQRM project shutters only about a year after it raised $10 million in a Series C round. While the market of Infrastructure Management tools and particularly Virtualization Management frameworks is growing, Qlusters failed to realize its goals and burned through approximately $34 million of capital.

As we reported earlier, Qlusters had no new roadmap after dropping the opensource openQRM project, which recently announced the beta of it’s 4.0 rewrite. It’s always sad to see a company like Qlusters leave the market like this, but fortunately their technology will continue to live on thanks to the open source community.

VMware Eyes Chinese Market, Signs OEM Agreement With Inspur

June 25, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware and Inspur today announced an OEM agreement to further accelerate the adoption of VMware virtualization in China. Starting today, Inspur is selling, distributing and fully supporting VMware’s datacenter virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure, on Inspur server systems.

The two companies will collaborate on market development, product sales, professional training and customer acquisition as well as technical services.

“China’s rapid economic growth and increased focus on conserving energy have spurred the need for customers to adopt the best solutions for meeting business demands while enabling a green datacenter,” said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware. “VMware virtualization addresses this need with solutions that not only consolidate servers, but also jump ahead to the next stages of virtualization: aggregating IT resources in virtualized pools and automating the management of these resources. VMware virtualization combined with Inspur’s expertise in local customer requirements offers a way to quickly cut operating and capital costs by as much as half, deliver applications faster and more reliably in virtual machines, improve information security, and run a more flexible and eco-friendly IT environment.”

Customers can now purchase Inspur servers bundled with VMware Infrastructure 3, provided with full support from Inspur.

[Source: Welt Online]

Breaking: Veeam Software Acquires nworks

June 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Veeam Software, known for virtualization management tools and its FastSCP file management freeware for VMware environments, has acquired nworks, a maker of “enterprise management connectors” that link VMware virtual infrastructure tools and enterprise systems management tools from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

“Our customers have been asking to manage their physical and virtual infrastructures through a single console, and many of them have significant investments in HP OpenView and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager,” says Ratmir Timashev, Veeam president and CEO (also see our video interview with him at the latest VMworld Europe).

Veeam’s new lineup of product offerings will include backup, reporting and monitoring tools as well as Veeam Configurator, which manages VMware configurations from a Windows interface; nworks Smart Plug-In for VMware for HP Software Operations Manager, which incorporates VMware management into HP OpenView; and nworks Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, which incorporates VMware management into Microsoft SCOM.

Embotics Releases V-Commander 2.0, Aims To Simplify Virtualization Lifecycle Management

June 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Embotics, which bills itself as a “Virtualization Lifecycle Management Company”, today released V-Commander 2.0 at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Management Summit 2008.

The new version of V-Commander reduces risks and costs by preventing virtual sprawl, automating lifecycle management and extending management systems for enterprise CIOs, CSOs, IT operations staff and security professionals. Learn more about the product in our video interviews with Jean-Marc Seguin, Chief Architect with Embotics (we’ve embedded the clip below) and the company’s founder and CEO, Jay Litkey.

V-Commander 2.0 aims to simplify virtual machine (VM) management within IT environments. Its features include:

Expanded Policy Capabilities – Increased capacity for new policies enables expanded zones and VM grouping, as well as additional policy actions for the different stages of the VM lifecycle.
Improved Reporting Capabilities – Facilitates unlimited custom reporting as well as task oriented reports that identify costs associated with expired, offline and unauthorized VMs.
Additional Enterprise Features – Provides easier installation and configuration workflow by enabling automatic VM identification tagging and the ability to associate and assign policies to groups as opposed to individual VMs.

[Source: BusinessWire]

Fortisphere Joins Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program

June 2, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Fortisphere, a provider of policy-based virtualization management software, today announced that it has been selected to join the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. As a member of the program, Fortisphere will receive customized Microsoft support for its software development initiatives and increased access to internal Microsoft resources, ensuring that its policy-based virtualization management solutions are compatible with Microsoft virtualization platforms—including the upcoming release of Hyper-V.

The Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program is designed to connect high-potential startups committed to the Microsoft platform to an extensive support network that provides access to Microsoft people and programs, guidance on future directions and support to accelerate their success. Fortisphere has also been named a Microsoft Certified Partner.

“Membership in the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program will deepen our relationship with Microsoft and provide us with more access to its virtualization technology,” said Michael Harper, president and CEO, Fortisphere. “Organizations are deploying heterogeneous virtual infrastructures to take full advantage of the cost-saving benefits of virtualization. Fortisphere provides the tools required to more efficiently manage heterogeneous virtual environments and ensure smart virtualization growth.”

Credit Suisse Enters Virtual Infrastructure Management Software Market With DynamicOps

June 2, 2008 by Robin Wauters 4 Comments

Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse Group launched a new spin-out today, aimed at taking an internally developed virtualization management platform to a commercial market.

The new company, DynamicOps, is being funded by an undisclosed amount of capital from Credit Suisse’s Next II venture group. Rich Krueger, a former executive at local storage virtualization equipment maker Incipient and CEO of DynamicOps, said the company is being operated “like a venture-backed firm” and that the amount of the funding is “substantial.”

The company’s virtual management product was originally developed internally by Credit Suisse’s Global Research and Development Group in 2005, after the company couldn’t find an external product to manage the firm’s growing virtualization infrastructure, officials said. The company has since rolled the product out to a variety of divisions across the company.

The company’s first product is focused on virtual desktops and server environment, but according to Krueger, who has also had stints at EMC, the firm will eventually move into other network layers, including storage.

Krueger said the 15-employee firm is in the process of building customer relationships with several firms but declined to name specific companies. Industries of focus, he said, include shipping and public utilities.

[Source: Mass High Tech]