virtualization

MokaFive Moves Virtualization Solution From Desktop To Cloud

April 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

MokaFive, a 3-year-old company from Redwood City who previously went by the name moka5, is realigning its market strategy from desktop virtualization provider for consumers to desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) innovation Virtual Desktop Solution provider for SMBs.

In essence, this solution is a console to centralize the management of multiple LivePCs (their consumer product), which contain an entire desktop operating system and application stack. Available today as a preview, the MokaFive solution thus leverages the power of cloud computing to deliver centrally managed, locally run virtual desktops as a service. General availability is scheduled for Q2 2008.

From the press release:

Underpinning the MokaFive Virtual Desktop Solution is the company’s LivePC format, which contains an entire desktop operating system and application stack. Inspired by Sun Microsystems’ SunRay architecture, LivePCs allow users to pause and resume their computing state on different PCs by carrying a USB flash drive. LivePCs are virtual machines running directly on users’ desktops—there is no need for a data center. They can be run online or offline, boot quickly on a PC, fit easily and securely on a USB flash drive and update automatically over a network or the Internet. LivePCs are managed centrally and can be executed locally on any compatible x86 machine, giving users the flexibility and performance of a PC.

“The LivePC format represents the next-generation of desktop computing, easily leapfrogging today’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions that require users to remotely connect to virtual machines hosted in data centers,” said Dr. Monica Lam, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Co-founder and Chief Scientist of MokaFive. “Unlike VDI solutions, which require a server for each handful of users, LivePCs deliver dynamically updated, or ‘live,’ images that can be used by thousands of users with a single server.”

[Source: Dana Gardner]

Follow-up On Our April Fool’s Joke On Sun Acquiring Parallels

April 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

By now, you may have heard about the prank post we published on April Fool’s Day about Sun acquiring Parallels for $ 205 million. While the story was obviously fake, many people started speculating about its authenticity and – which was far more interesting – about the possibility of Parallels ever selling, and if so, at what price?

We were amused about the comments about it being ‘not so funny’, which was never the intention anyway. It wasn’t a joke, people, it was an April Fool. If it mislead you for even a second, that means it worked. It wasn’t supposed to make you laugh out loud, it was meant to get you thinking. We loved the response!

Honestly, did it?

Evidently, we didn’t want the prank to be a lame one, so we decided to run a story that would make people stop and think rather than being obviously fake, which is exactly what happened. As far as we’re concerned, it worked. We even got some feedback from both Sun and Parallels employees about the story, about how much they got a good laugh out of it. We loved reading the retaliatory post on the Parallels Consumer Tech blog, too.

Not exactly something to start a lawsuit over, or something that would actually affect the stock market, like some blogger ignorantly suggested (we hope he was joking too, because otherwise it would almost seem envious).

Anyway, official statements from parties mentionned in the article contained exactly the type of comment that official statements would have to feature: “Parallels is not for sale“, “Parallels is worth much more“, etc. (don’t you just love how these two kinda contradict each other?).

To be fair, we think Parallels is worth much more than $ 205 million as well, we weren’t trying to make a statement by picking that price, we just kinda went for it after thinking about it for a second or two. Same for the acquirer, we went for Sun after reading somewhere that Parallels would have been a great acquisition for Sun about 2 years ago, before it got so big.

Some of the points raised in the blog post by Ilya Baimetov, Directory of Technology at Parallels, are more interesting than the discussion about a good acquisition price, though. He says:

“SUN is a really strange acquirer. Our products are for Windows, Mac and Linux, and SUN is not that focused on the first two. Also, SUN is really not that much into automation, so again, not a good fit. If Microsoft or VMware or even HP or IBM was mentioned – it would make some sense, but not SUN.”

Excellent way to say you’re not for sale, guys! 😉

Now can we move on?

Lenovo Becomes First PC Maker to Announce Proprietary Client Virtualization Platform (CVP)

April 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Last week, Lenovo announced the first low-level client virtualization software platform offered by any PC hardware manufacturer.

Lenovo’s Client Virtualization Platform (CVP) will be the base technology for customer solutions shipping with Lenovo PC products later this year. Lenovo’s Client Virtualization Platform uses the latest hardware features to isolate applications. These applications provide improved internet security and manageability, while minimizing the impact on performance. At Intel’s Developer Forum in Shanghai, Lenovo made the first public demonstration of solutions based on this technology. Lenovo’s platform uses Intel Virtualization technology to help to bring similar benefits to PC clients with near native performance and full Windows PC experience.

“Our new client virtualization technology underscores Lenovo’s commitment to innovation,” said George He, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Lenovo. “Our leadership in PC virtualization will enable us to optimize PC systems for virtualized applications and give our customers access to more efficient, more stable, and better performing virtualization solutions in the near future.”

“Intel and Lenovo have worked closely on optimizing virtualization for several years,” said Gregory Bryant, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Office Platform Division. “By taking advantage of Intel’s Virtualization Technologies, Lenovo’s Client Virtualization Platform is able to bring new levels of security and manageability to customers.”

[Source: Tarry Singh]

Reading Tip: Andrew Kutz On the Future Of The Virtualization Ecosystem

April 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Here’s a must-read blog post from Andrew Kutz over on O’Reilly’s On Lamp: Ubiquitous underpinnings and idyllic interfaces – The virtualization ecosystem of the (very near) future.

An excerpt:

The virtualization ecosystem is changing; a division is occurring that is separating the ecosystem into two areas: specialized and commoditized software. Hypervisors are becoming commoditized such that they no longer need to be purchased from a specific vendor. A few years ago when virtualization was starting to heat up, playgrounds across the nation were quickly subject to the VMware-kids and Xen-kids cliques. Either you were down with ESX or you were hip to Xen; there was no middle-ground. However, today we find ourselves in an entirely different predicament. In addition to VMware and Citrix (bye, bye XenSource, we hardly knew ya), we have the soon-to-be released Hyper-V, VirtualIron, KVM, Sun xVM, and even Oracle is getting into the game. The number of available hypervisors on the market has grown drastically in a relatively short period of time. Compare that to when you had only two choices; now there is a plethora of virtualization solutions to answer the demand for reducing physical servers in the data center and consolidating resources. Now that hypervisors are a dime-a-dozen it only makes sense that a virtual machine (VM) should be able to run on any of them.

Read the rest!

Will You Dance to Endeavors’ Application Jukebox?

April 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Endeavors recently launched its Application Jukebox, an application virtualization and delivery product, taking the concepts of application encapsulation and application streaming to a new level.

The two versions of Application Jukebox available today include Endeavors’ unique, fully-configurable virtualization that provides administrators with the flexibility to publish applications in fully isolated (sandboxed) mode, fully integrated mode, or any combination between the two options. Application Jukebox SaaS Edition features usage metering and a kiosk mode to support a pay-as-you-go model for application rental, plus portals that provide an easy-to-use environment for service providers and ISVs to create a custom application landing site. Application Jukebox Enterprise Edition supports Active Directory and offers user and group monitoring, as well as extensive tracking and support for cost-effective license management.

“We have seen a great deal of interest in Application Jukebox from current and prospective customers,” said Peter Bondar, CEO at Endeavors Technologies. “We are excited by the positive feedback from participants in our beta program and believe this will continue to grow as customers now begin deploying Application Jukebox.”

Dan Kusnetzky over at ZDNet Blogs seems to be impressed:

“Endeavors appears to have thought about the concepts of application virtualization and applicaiton delivery/streaming pretty deeply while architecting this product family. The company has recognized both the strengths and the limitations of previous approaches to each of these concepts and tried offer products that offered strengths equal to the approaches offered by rivals while minimizing the limitations those rivals faced.”

Scalent And Enigmatec Team Up

April 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Enigmatec, provider of run book automation (RBA) software, and Scalent Systems, provider of infrastructure virtualization software for large data centers, today announced an integration partnership to enable policy driven automation of server repurposing in the data center.

The partnership reportedly combines policy-based IT process automation from Enigmatec and server repurposing from Scalent to deliver an integrated software solution to dynamically place compute resources where and when they are needed in the data center. This implementation of real-time infrastructure should dramatically lower data center management operations costs while increasing flexibility in the face of business need change.

The Enigmatec Management System (EMS) continually monitors all levels of a multi-tier application stack for changes in availability or demand. When EMS detects a failure or load spike, the system orchestrates the reallocation of resources to the appropriate users and applications, leveraging Server Automation software to ensure that all resources are maintained at required release, patch and configuration levels. EMS also provides full lifecycle management of shared virtual resources including decommissioning, archiving and returning resources back to a server pool.

Scalent allows data center operators to rapidly change entire systems and associated topologies, including which servers are running, what software is running on them, and how they’re connected to network and storage. Scalent does this in real-time without requiring physical changes to the infrastructure. Scalent V/OE software enables customers to take their data centers from “dead bare metal” (powered off hardware with no software installed) to live (newly deployed or restored), connected (to network and storage) servers, in five minutes or less.

“Scalent’s server repurposing solution gives IT operations the ability to dynamically change their server environment,” said Duncan Johnston-Watt, Chief Technology Officer, Enigmatec. “Integrating Scalent with Enigmatec takes this to its logical conclusion – using run book automation to orchestrate their data center virtualization solution delivers a policy-driven infrastructure which automatically adapts to meet changing business requirements.”