virtualization

ScaleMP Raises $8 Million More, Funding Now Totals $26 Million (Oh Yeah, They Also Launched)

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Cupertino-based ScaleMP, a provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, today announced that it has raised $8 million in new venture funding, bringing the total raised to $26 million. Participation in this up-round funding included all of the existing investors: Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TL Ventures, and ABS Ventures. This announcement coincides with the official launch of the company and its technology, whose details have also been announced today.

The ScaleMP aggregation technology allows a server to expand outside a single system boundary, addressing growing end-user requirements for large memory systems or systems with high-core count. The vSMP Foundation aggregation platform is a software-only solution that eliminates the need for extensive R&D or proprietary hardware components in developing high-end x86 systems, and reduces overall end-user system cost and operational expenditures. It utilizes up to sixteen x86 systems to create a single shared-memory system with 4 to 32 processors (128 cores) and up to 1 TB of RAM, providing significantly better price/performance compared to traditional SMP systems and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to clusters.

The ScaleMP product line includes two products: a standalone solution, which enables the industry’s first four-socket system at under $10,000, and an embedded solution that helps original design manufacturers (ODMs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) build high-end systems.

The ScaleMP solutions are sold through a worldwide network of partners. The vSMP Foundation Standalone is available through VARs and system integrators at prices starting at US$2,750. vSMP Foundation Embedded is available through ODMs and OEMs at prices that vary depending on system configuration.

[Source: AmericanVentureMagazine]

Citrix Releases XenServer 4.1, Simplifies Pricing Policy

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

This sure took a while: Citrix finally upgraded XenServer yesterday with the 4.1 release, adding some 50 new features for the first major version upgrade since Citrix acquired XenSource last August.

Some of the most compelling new capabilities:

XenMotion: Seamlessly move virtual machines without downtime
XenCenter: Unified virtualization management interface, including servers, storage and networking
Native 64-bit hypervisor: Scalability and support for enterprise applications
Resource Pools: Efficient configuration, allocation and authentication for virtualization resources
XenAPI: Integration with existing management invesments, infrastructure and processes

But it’s the change in pricing policy, which it dubs ‘groundbreaking‘, that deserves a closer look the most: with the release of 4.1, the company is moving away from counting sockets to charging on a per-physical server basis for all XenServer editions. Citrix claims this should let customers have an unlimited number of virtual machines or guest operating systems running on a server for the same price.

XenServer starts at $ 600 per server for an annual license, and $ 900 per server for a perpetual license. Customers using the old pricing structure will need to wait until their current licenses run out before making the change. The new pricing applies to all industry standard 64-bit servers with up to four CPU sockets.

Curious to see if VMware will change its pricing strategy too, and if Microsoft will adapt accordingly (both VMware as Windows Server 2008 Data Center edition with Hyper-V will be charged on a per-processor basis).

Microsoft Heading Forward With Container-Based Data Centers

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Not entirely related to virtualization as such, but hugely relevant as far we’re concerned: Microsoft is getting serious about embracing containers as the key to building scalable, energy-efficient cloud computing platforms. The company’s bold move is an affirmation of the potential for containers to address the most pressing power, cooling and capacity utilization challenges facing data center operators. Microsoft’s new Chicago facility is part of the company’s fleet of next-generation data centers being built to support its Live suite of “software plus services” online applications.

DataCenterKnowledge quotes Microsoft Director of Data Center Services Michael Manos:

“The entire first floor of Chicago is going to be containers. This represents our first container data center. The containers are going to be dropped off and plugged into network cabling and power.” The second floor of the immense facility will be a traditional raised-floor data center, Manos said. “It’s a bold step forward. We’re trying to address scale with the cloud level services. We were trying to figure the best way to bring capacity online quickly.”

Manos added that the facility will accommodate between 150 and 220 shipping containers, which will be shipped and dropped off by trucks. That approach led Microsoft to consult with parking lot operators to address the design logistics of enabling large trucks to navigate within the facility.

In 2006, Sun Microsystems introduced Project Blackbox (now the Sun MD S20), the first effort at a “data center in a box” incorporating a high-density computing environment into a 20-foot shipping container. The containers can travel on trains, ships or trucks.

We were thinking about adding a joke about containers containing containers (you know, the software ones), but it’s getting late and we’ve had quite a busy, interesting day already.

Sun Microsystems To Acquire Parallels For $ 205 Million (Updated)

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters 23 Comments

Looks like that Parallels IPO won’t be happening after all. Sun Microsystems has today announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Parallels (formerly SWsoft) and all of its assets for a whopping $ 205 million. The major acquisition had been rumoured to be imminent throughout the course of 2007, but never actually went through, which led mosts analysts to believe the Herndon, VA-based company was heading towards an IPO following in VMware’s footsteps rather than being picked up by one of the big boys.

Needless to say, the acquisition is a pretty bold one, which is bound to serve as wake-up call for the entire virtualization industry. Both companies had been on a buying spree the past few months: Sun picked up innotek / VirtualBox, while Parallels recently acknowledged its January acquisition of ModernGigabyte. The acquisition is expected to be finalized by June, around the time Sun also plans to ship xVM Server.

“With the acquisition of Parallels, Sun’s ready to become the only true leader in virtualization technology,” said Brian Sutphin, Executive Vice President Corporate Development & Alliances for Sun Microsystems. “With Parallels’ strong desktop position, we will be able to cater both Windows/Linux and Mac users with our state-of-the-art virtualization offering.”

Sergei Beloussov, Board Chairman and CEO of Parallels, added:”We’re extremely excited about the opportunities this merger will bring for our many customers and partners. We’re looking forward to effectively integrating our server product line with Sun’s sparc systems.”

Parallels, former SWsoft, has been making waves ever since it was founded in 1999. The virtualization technology company today counts more than 900 employees worldwide and has more than doubled revenues every year for the past eight years, while its products have been giving VMware a run for its money, especially in the small- and medium-business marketplace. The company was backed in 2005 by Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Insight Venture Partners.

While VMware has been more than struggling to consolidate its splashing entry on the public market, Parallels has effectively become the second largest virtualization seller, with both containers and hypervisor plays in its portfolio. Sun’s bold move is logical in this regard, be it quite late, as this acquisition would have made more sense if it had happened around this time last year.

We’re still scrambling to get some official comments on the news from market insiders, we’ll update this post as they come in!

Update: obviously, this was an April Fool (we’re in based in Europe, so it’s April 1 earlier than over in the US).

On any other day, what would you think about this announcement? Would it have surprised you that much? Do you think it would be a fair valuation and a good synergy? Let us know in comments!

(also: check some classic April Fools’ Day jokes here)

Update 2: kudos to Parallels for their sense of humour, thanks to Brian, Dan and Tarry for linking and to the person who dugg the story 😉

Update 3: check out our follow-up post

Research: Virtualization Is Big in Asia Pacific, To Hit $ 1.35 Billion By 2010

March 31, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

The virtualization software and services market in Asia Pacific is estimated to reach $ 1.35 billion with CAGR of 42 % by 2010, according to IT market research firm Springboard Research.

Virtualization services is estimated to touch $ 1 billion by 2010 and will form the major portion of this market as organizations will spend two to three times more on services than on software. According to the research, 50 % of CIOs want to deploy virtualization solutions over the next 18-24 months to address issues like low system capacity utilization, poor performance and other challenges associated with managing growing IT infrastructure.

The report is based on a survey of CIOs from large and mid-sized enterprises in Australia, China, India and Singapore.

“Our research indicates that virtualization, at least at the server level, is becoming an imperative and that a growing number of companies will implement virtualization at the server level in 2008,” said Michael Barnes, vice president – Software Research at Springboard Research.

“The complex nature of engagements with vendors and SIs while implementing virtualization solutions is a prime reason for virtualization services taking a larger share of the market,” he added.

On the software side, VMWare is the Asia Pacific virtualization market leader with an estimated 70 % market share, while Microsoft, Parallels, Virtual Iron and XenSource are other players with significant presence.

IBM, HP, Dell and Sun dominate the virtualization services market. Australia and Korea lead the virtualization marketplace in APAC due to their well-built infrastructure, while Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and India are high growth potential markets.

[Source: CIOL]

Fujitsu Siemens Merges With Former Siemens IT Services Company

March 31, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Fujitsu Siemens, which manufactures hardware from laptop PCs to servers, will this week merge with a former Siemens IT services company to enable the company to battle head on with players like IBM, Dell and HP. Two years ago, Fujitsu Siemens had already acquired a former Siemens engineering division called Siemens IT Products Services.

To this date, the division has been trading as a separate company from Fujitsu Siemens but from 1 April the two entities will merge.

[Source: SiliconRepublic]