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Citrix Systems Newest Member Of The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Board

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The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) today announced that it has elected Citrix Systems to its board of directors. In addition, CA, which was appointed to the Board last year, was elected to a full term and joins Advanced Micro Devices, CA, EMC, Fujitsu, IBM, and Microsoft Corporation who were re-elected to the board. These seven companies join Broadcom, Dell, HP, Hitachi, Intel Corporation, Novell, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and VMware to drive the development of DMTF standards and initiatives in 2009.

The DMTF board of directors works together to set cross-industry priorities, promote interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments, foster alliance partnerships and lead the organization’s committee work. DMTF technologies are designed to address the industry’s requirements for interoperable distributed management, providing valuable tools for managing multiple platforms.

“Citrix looks forward to sharing our considerable expertise in the enterprise to alleviate the challenges of managing complex IT environments,” said Abolfazl Sirjani, CTO Office and senior director of advanced products at Citrix. “Over the past 20 years, we have had the privilege of being part of the fabric of many blue-chip companies, in 100 million corporate desktops and 1 million datacenter servers. Our solutions, best practices and ongoing research and development should be of great benefit both to DMTF and to the industry as a whole.”

Sirjani will represent Citrix on the board. Other individuals representing the board member companies include:

  • Valerie Kane, AMD
  • Uri Elzur, Broadcom
  • Paul Lipton, CA
  • Jon Hass, Dell
  • Wayne Adams, EMC
  • Hiro Kishimoto, Fujitsu
  • Jishnu Mukerji, HP
  • Nobutoshi Sagawa, Hitachi, Ltd.
  • Mike Baskey, IBM
  • Kevin Cline, Intel Corporation
  • Josh Cohen, Microsoft Corporation
  • Robert Wipfell, Novell
  • Tony DiCenzo, Oracle
  • Mark Carlson, Sun Microsystems
  • Winston Bumpus, VMware

ICC Global Hosting Joins VMware Service Provider Program

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ICC Global Hosting today announced its membership in the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) to extend its relationship with VMware in delivering hosted virtual desktops in the Cloud.

As both a VSPP and VMware VIP Partner Program member, ICC Global Hosting augments its relationship with VMware and supports the VMware vCloud and VMware vClient Initiatives with ICC Global Hosting’s desktop-as-a-service offering.

ICC Global Hosting’s proven methodology teamed with VMware’s leadership in desktop virtualization delivers a robust virtual desktop as a service that reduces cost and management associated with desktop support.  These hosted desktops help assure a consistent end user experience with the most current software and patches while increasing the client’s data security.  Desktops as a service allows customers to move their desktop expense from a CapEx to OpEx expenditure which more accurately reflects desktop support as an expense.

“VMware is helping our service provider partners build the eco-structure to host customers in the Cloud by leveraging our industry-leading virtualization platform,” said Geoffrey Waters, director, VMware Service Provider Program, VMware. “For those enterprises considering desktop virtualization, ICC Global Hosting can provide all the benefits of virtual desktops combined with the benefits of cloud computing.”

The 451 Group Snaps Up Research Firm Moss Creek Capital

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The 451 Group has acquired independent equity-research firm Moss Creek Capital in order to expand its services for the professional investment community. Dallas-based Moss Creek provides investment research on publicly traded software companies, offering actionable insight gleaned from conversations with end users, key players in the software distribution channel and company executives. Moss Creek principal Gregg Speicher will remain with the acquired firm.

The acquisition expands the coverage and financial expertise of The 451 Group, an independent analyst firm that covers emerging technologies within the enterprise IT industry.

“The addition of Moss Creek will accelerate our efforts to explain to investors how disruptive technologies will affect large and small public companies,” said Martin V. McCarthy, CEO of The 451 Group. “With major forces such as cloud computing gathering on the horizon, we believe that investors are hungry for deep insight into which companies are going to be winners and losers in the resulting market. We will continue to look for opportunities to expand our firm, and we expect to complete additional acquisitions this year.”

Pano Logic Releases Remote, Upgrades Pano System 2.6

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Pano Logic today announced the newest addition to their product line, Pano Remote, as well as a new version of their flagship product, Pano System 2.6. With the easy to carry Pano Remote USB key, users can now access their Pano managed virtual desktops conveniently and securely when working out of the office away from their Pano devices—without requiring a costly or complex VPN solution. New features of Pano System 2.6 include integration with Pano Remote, easier installation of the Pano Manager virtual appliance using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), a new interface called the Collection Creation Wizard for easier configuration of policies for provisioning and managing desktop virtual machines, the ability for administrators to control virtual desktop power state directly from the Pano Manager administrator console, graphic identification and authorization (GINA) application interoperability and standalone VMware ESXi support for small single-server deployments.

Pano Remote allows users of Pano System 2.6 to access their Pano desktop virtual machine from a remote location over the Internet. Delivered as a USB key with embedded software, Pano Remote will run on any Windows XP or Vista computer and does not require the use of VPN software or hardware. Instead, it relies on a communication mechanism bundled with Pano Remote called Pano Gateway. The Pano session may use local printers, local storage drives and a shared clipboard between the local Windows system and the remote virtual desktop. In addition, the administrator can set policies within the Pano Manager that centrally control which capabilities are enabled.

Pano System 2.6 includes a number of new features to improve ease of deployment and interoperability:

  • Pano Collection Creation Wizard – allowing administrators to more easily configure desktop virtual machines by including context sensitive help topics for administrators to find relevant information easily and quickly, and offering administrators more flexibility in defining how automatically provisioned desktop virtual machines are named by Pano Manager.
  • Streamlined Installation of Pano Manager – delivering Pano Manager as a virtual appliance in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), enabling it to easily be imported into VMware Infrastructure in a one-click operation. Additionally, the Pano Manager virtual machine has been optimized for size, speed of download and simplicity of configuration, making the solution the easiest way to get started with desktop virtualization.
  • Standalone VMware ESXi support – providing easy installation of Pano System 2.6 for small deployments, enabling configuration with a single instance of ESXi without requiring VMware vCenter. This option provides an easy entry level solution for small businesses with a convenient upgrade path as needs grow.
  • GINA module interoperability – interoperating with specific applications that install their own GINA modules. Such interoperability simplifies installation and upgrade of Pano Desktop Services on systems that also have authentication solutions such as Imprivata OneSign and Ensure Technologies XyLoc installed.

Additional features include administrative control over the desktop virtual machine power state, device-based control over display and mouse/keyboard settings, tighter integration with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and Active Directory Group Policy Objects when installing updates, and improved responsiveness.

Pano System 2.6 is now available with pricing starting at $329 for a single Pano desktop and $35 per USB key for Pano Remote.

Release: Desktop Analysis Pack for Lanamark Suite

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Lanamark today announced availability of the Desktop Analysis Pack for Lanamark Suite. This new analysis pack is designed to help solution providers analyze enterprise desktop environments, identify candidate desktops for virtualization and recommend optimal resource allocation to virtual desktops in order to maximize end user adoption and satisfaction.

The Desktop Analysis Pack distinguishes desktops from laptops to identify mobile users and determines associations between workstations and external devices such as monitors, printers and scanners. It leverages the Lanamark Software Intelligence (LSI) technology to recognize software applications installed versus ones actually used across the enterprise. The combined information about desktop hardware and software enables channel partners to identify desktops most suitable for virtualization, determine what type of thin client devices would be most appropriate for end users and recommend how software applications should be allocated to minimize licensing costs.

Once the analysis phase is completed and candidate desktops for virtualization are identified, solution providers can then leverage the Lanamark Server Virtualization Design Module to build optimal virtual desktop infrastructure solutions across leading virtualization and hardware platforms. The module allows what-if scenarios to be compared side-by-side with comprehensive TCO calculations and enables channel partners to build end-to-end solutions with server, storage and thin client components from Brocade, Dell, EMC, Emulex, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp, QLogic, Sun Microsystems, Wyse and Xiotech.

IBM Walks Away From Talks Over Potential Sun Acquisition

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IBM has withdrawn its $7 billion bid for Sun Microsystems today (Sunday), reports the NY Times, who confirmed the collapse of the talks based on a statement from an unnamed source while several other media, including the Wall Street Journal and ZDNet, were still speculating. The New York Times correctly points out this leaves Sun free to pursue other opportunities for selling itself.

Since last year, Sun executives had been meeting with potential buyers. I.B.M. stepped up, seeing an opportunity to add to its large software business, acquire valuable researchers and consolidate the market for larger, so-called server computers that corporations use in their data centers.

In their talks, I.B.M. and Sun had a contract to deal with each other exclusively. Now, Sun is free to pursue other suitors, including I.B.M. rivals like Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems. Cisco recently entered the market for server computers.

It will be interesting to watch the market react to this on Monday morning.