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Goldman Sachs Predicts IT Spending Downturn, Virtualization Uprise

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Goldman Sachs predicts IT spending will slip from 7 % growth to 5 % growth in 2008. Not a downturn of catastrophic proportions, but still bad news for the industry. On the upside, server virtualization and server consolidation were ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in terms of spending priorities for this and next year. No. 3 was cost-cutting in general, followed by grid computing and on-demand computing finishing the priorities list.

Expectations of budget growth remain down significantly on a year-over-year basis, with many CIOs limiting their purchases to projects with a high and fast ROI. We continue to believe that 2008 IT spending will decelerate to 5 percent from 7 percent in 2007….Demand for discretionary IT projects dropped to its lowest point in the history of our survey, with caution beginning to spread to the offshore providers. CIOs have emphasized to us that they are buying on a need versus want basis, are often downsizing deals to fit with current budget constraints…. In fact, contrary to general tightening in spending, purchases with an especially compelling ROI are being accelerated in the current environment.

[For more on the report, including graphics: The Open Road]

VDIworks Brings Desktop Virtualization Management to Hyper-V

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VDIworks, the young company recently spun out of ClearCube, announced it has tied its solution with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, which provides management of physical and virtual deployments throughout the data center, desktops and devices.

VDIworks released a new plug-in, VDIvision for System Center, allowing its customers to use MSCOM to manage a variety of VDIworks-driven features. The management plug-in includes a highly configurable and scalable connection broker, leveraging the power of desktop virtualization. VDIworks utilized APIs from Microsoft to ensure seamless functionality among both products.

On the heels of Microsoft’s release of Hyper-V, VDIworks is the first virtual desktop management vendor to integrate with Hyper-V and the System Center management offerings. The plugin is integrated with Active Directory so IT managers can control users’ access rights and permissions. It runs a SQL Server database at the back end in which enterprise IT can store all the components of the VDI environment so it can run reports against them and manage the environment.

VDIvision for System Center is platform-agnostic, so it can also run with the VMware and Xen hypervisors.

[Source: InternetNews]

VDIworks

Xenocode Pushes Major Update of Virtual Application Studio 2008

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Xenocode released its flagship application virtualization solution Virtual Application Studio 2008 last May, and has now pushed its first major update, dubbed Service Pack 1. Virtual Application Studio allows Windows, .NET and Java-based desktop applications to be deployed in standalone executables that run instantly, anywhere.

Virtual Application Studio 2008 with SP1 includes a bunch of feature enhancements and engine upgrades, including:

  • Auto-configuration of Microsoft Office 2007 and other popular applications: An industry first, Virtual Application Studio completely eliminates the need for any snapshotting or sequencing to configure Microsoft Office 2007 and other popular applications.  Studio automatically configures itself for popular applications given appropriate source media and license keys.
  • Ability to import external application configurations, including VMware ThinApp configurations: Customers who have already packaged applications using other technologies, including VMware ThinApp/Thinstall, can now import these configurations into Studio with a single click, without the need for any recapture.
  • Communication between virtualized applications: Virtual environment process controls and jukeboxing allow multiple applications to share virtual resources and “talk” with one another. For instance, users can embed live Excel spreadsheets into Word documents or run multiple applications within a shared virtual environment.
  • New site licensing programs: Educational institutions, government agencies, and ISVs can now license Xenocode technology with no per-device or per-application fees.

A detailed list of updates and patches is available on the Xenocode RSS feed.

[Source: MarketWatch]

Xenocode

Sanbolic Bridges Hyper-V And Shared Storage Networks

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Sanbolic today announced (PDF) that Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines can now be stored on a single shared storage area network (SAN) storage volume using Sanbolic Kayo File System. The virtual machines can then be moved independently between physical host servers using Quick Migration because all host servers have shared access to the virtual machines.

“Kayo FS is a new product that provides file-level shared access to a SAN volume from multiple physical host servers and is designed specifically to provide a cost-effective shared LUN solution for Hyper-V virtual machines,” said Momchil Michailov, Sanbolic’s founder. “Sanbolic is already shipping Melio FS, which is an advanced clustered file system with byte-range locking that can also provide concurrent read/write access to application data on SAN storage from multiple Windows physical or virtual servers. Kayo FS is aimed at a much broader group of customers who we expect will adopt server virtualization now that it is component of the Windows Server 2008 platform.”

Sanbolic’s product portfolio also includes Melio clustered file system and LaScala volume manager, which are designed to support Windows applications which benefit from central administration of a large virtual storage pool simultaneously accessed by multiple physical or virtual servers. Melio FS uses 64 bit architecture, allowing very large volume and file system sizes.

These products can utilize any fibre channel or iSCSI storage hardware. Windows directory, reporting, and clustering features are supported. The file system also incorporates quality of service assignment to allow prioritization of defined workloads in storage bandwidth-constrained environments.

Kayo FS will be priced at $299 per host server and sold in a 5 license bundle.

[Source: Scott Lowe]

Sanbolic

Exclusive Video: VMware In A Nutshell, By Product Marketing Manager John Gilmartin

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So what’s VMware all about now on a technology level, now that their stock went tumbling and their CEO has been replaced? John Gilmartin, Group Manager, Product Marketing at VMware answered our questions on virtualization in general and their strategy and product portfolio in particular.

After defining virtualization and virtual machines, John dives deeper into what drives prospective virtualization customers (infrastructure consolidation, high availability, business continuity, disaster recovery?). He also shares more on their recently announced VMsafe initiative, which allows trusted partners to ‘peak’ into a Virtual Machine and identify threats from the outside of the operating systems and the applications they try to protect.

John underlines that VMware is offering features far beyond the basic data center consolidation needs; such as life cycle management, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), automated provisioning, fail over, disaster recovery and optimize the management tasks for a virtual infrastructure.

All this is part of VMware’s from-desktop-to-datacenter portfolio and makes VMware feel confident and well positioned to compete with Hyper-V from Microsoft.

Gene Fay Leaves EMC, Joins VKernel As Top Sales Guy

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After Diane Greene leaving VMware, in comes the story of Gene Fay joining VKernel (check our earlier coverage) as Vice President of Sales. Fay was vice president of worldwide sales and global alliances for the security  information and event management (SIEM) business unit of RSA, the Security Division of EMC. He joined EMC after the company acquired Network Intelligence where he was vice president of business development.

Gene seems to be happy with the decision he made:

“I have watched the virtualization space explode over the last five years,” said Gene Fay, “With our innovative virtual appliances for systems management, a very hot market, and a great team, VKernel offers a fantastic opportunity to work with customers who are rapidly virtualizing their data centers and partners that are helping them through the process.”

[Source: PRNewswire]