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SpringSource Partners Up With VMware For Spring-Powered Enterprise Virtualization Offering

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SpringSource today announced at SpringOne Americas 2008 a new relationship with VMware that will help organizations to seamlessly develop and deploy Spring applications in VMware virtualized environments.

The collaboration with VMware, a SpringSource Certified Solutions Partner, includes integration between SpringSource Tool Suite, an Eclipse-powered development environment for building enterprise applications using the Spring Portfolio, and VMware Workstation to enable the dynamic creation of virtual machines on developer desktops.

SpringSource is also developing two open source application-server virtual appliances – the SpringSource tc Server and dm Server virtual appliances. When run on VMware Infrastructure, these appliances will enable the portability of enterprise Java applications across desktop and data center environments. SpringSource dm Server is a completely modular, OSGi-based Java server designed to run enterprise Java applications and Spring-powered applications with a new degree of flexibility and reliability. SpringSource tc Server is the enterprise version of Apache Tomcat – the most widely used Java application server – hardened for enterprise use and coupled with mission-critical operational capabilities and support that systems administrators require.

SpringSource Tool Suite integration with VMware Workstation will enable development and QA professionals to quickly and easily specify virtual server configurations for different development and test scenarios. These virtual appliances will allow developers to select a variety of build targets with different operating systems and application server configurations without needing additional physical hardware – dramatically accelerating software development times and reducing hardware costs. Virtual appliance configuration, deployment and debugging will be integrated with the SpringSource Tool Suite, and ready-to-use virtual images will be provided for dm Server, tc Server and Apache Tomcat.

The first SpringSource/VMware commercial offerings are scheduled for availability in January 2009.

VMware Releases VMware View 3 For Virtual Desktop Environments

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VMware today announced the general availability of VMware View 3. With VMware View 3, IT organizations can “decouple” a desktop from specific physical devices or locations to create a personalized view of a user’s desktop, applications, and data – called “myView” – that is securely accessible from almost any device, at any time. By hosting these virtual desktop images in the datacenter using the industry-leading virtualization and management platform, VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware View 3 enables IT personnel to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops simply, securely, and with substantially lower operating costs.

VMware View 3 is a major step in VMware’s vClient Initiative, announced at VMworld 2008 in September, to solve the “desktop dilemma.” As described by VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz, the desktop dilemma is the business choice of whether to provide thick or thin clients for employees. Thick clients, or fully loaded PCs, give employees a rich set of applications in their desktop environment, but are a management nightmare because applications can be distributed across thousands of PCs that must be provisioned, updated, patched and secured individually.

Thin clients are cheaper, more secure, and more cost-effective to manage, but traditionally have not been able to deliver the richness, flexibility, or compatibility of a thick client. Most businesses provide thin clients only for employees such as call center staff who can be productive in a more stripped-down environment. VMware View 3 solves this dilemma by combining the benefits of both approaches – delivering rich, personalized virtual desktops to any device (whether thick or thin), while simplifying management and securing endpoints with virtual desktops hosted in the datacenter.

VMware View 3 is a family of products available in two editions:

  • VMware View 3, Enterprise Edition: includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition and VMware View Manager 3, a flexible desktop management server enabling IT administrators to quickly provision and tightly control user access.
  • VMware View 3, Premier Edition: includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition, VMware View Manager 3, VMware ThinApp for agentless application virtualization and VMware View Composer, a new product that enables IT staff to create multiple virtual desktops from a single image, increasing the speed of provisioning desktops and reducing storage requirements.

With the following new products and technologies, VMware View 3 is the only enterprise-class solution that delivers simple, end-to-end management of virtual desktops and virtual applications from the datacenter to the client:

  • VMware View Composer is a new product that uses Linked Clone technology to create virtual desktops rapidly from a master image while consuming up to 70 percent less storage space. Automated image preparation and provisioning take only seconds and are centrally controlled by View Manager. In addition, View Composer can reduce management costs by enabling IT to update thousands of individual virtual desktops by simply updating the master image with a patch or application update and then applying the changes to each desktop cloned from the master image. View Composer provides this one-to-many image updating while preserving user data, settings, and preferences so patching is seamless to end users.
  • VMware ThinApp is bundled with VMware View 3 to enable simplified application packaging and deployment to a virtual desktop environment. ThinApp and View Composer work together to provide streamlined virtual desktop image creation and updating. ThinApp enables applications to run independently of the host operating system version or patch level. This simplifies updating and patching applications, and provides additional storage reduction for virtual desktops by centralizing and compressing applications. ThinApp’s unique architecture does not require an agent on the user’s desktop, a major advantage compared to other techniques for virtualization applications.
  • Offline Desktop, an experimental feature, provides the flexibility to intelligently and securely move virtual desktops between the datacenter and a local laptop or desktop, increasing user productivity while providing secure mobility. Users can “check out” a virtual desktop onto an ordinary PC, such as a laptop, run the virtual desktop locally and then check it back in to the datacenter. Offline Desktop allows a user to keep using his virtual desktop when no network is available, or simply to take advantage of local resources for the best virtual desktop user experience available.
  • Unified Access, a new feature of VMware View Manager 3, provides desktop administrators with a single management platform for multiple types of sessions. VMware View Manager 3 connects to desktop environments hosted on VMware Infrastructure, or user sessions running on Windows Terminal Servers or even physical PCs such as a blade PC. Individuals have a single point of access to seamlessly connect to their desktop environment, while administrators have a single point of administration.
  • Virtual Printing provides end users the ability to print to any local or network printer without installing specific printer drivers. Virtual Printing technology provides compression for print jobs and auto detection of local printers from the client. This eliminates printer driver issues and the need for printer configuration. End users get high quality printing with enhanced performance across the WAN.
  • Multimedia Redirection improves the user experience with rich multimedia playback capabilities. The multimedia processing tasks are intelligently redirected from the server to the end user device where the multimedia stream is decoded, taking advantage of the local processing power.

VMware View 3 is available immediately through VMware sales and the company’s extensive network of OEM partners and more than 20,000 channel partners. VMware View 3 Enterprise Edition is priced at $150 per concurrent connection and the VMware View 3 Premier Edition is priced at $250 per concurrent connection.

Industry Moves: VMware And Virtual Iron Lose Key Executives

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VMware has lost a key executive today with the departure of Nand Mulchandani, former Senior Director of Security Products, who has decided to take on a job as CEO for OpenDNS instead of staying on at the troubled virtualization leader.

Virtual Iron has lost its Director of Corporate Marketing Tim Walsh, who started his own consulting business.

Akorri Announces BalancePoint Plug-In For VMware vCenter

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Akorri has announced the availability of the BalancePoint Plug-In for VMware vCenter — a new capability sold with its BalancePoint software solution that allows VMware administrators to use BalancePoint directly from their VMware vCenter console, simplifying the management of virtualized environments.

“The BalancePoint Plug-In for VMware vCenter provides ‘single pane of glass’ management of a virtualized data center from within the vCenter console,” said Jeff Boles, senior analyst with the Taneja Group. “BalancePoint complements the element management aspects of vCenter by providing end-to-end performance management for all virtual and physical infrastructure components. This type of detailed insight goes well beyond basic utilization monitoring, and is absolutely critical to companies when they virtualize business-critical production applications.”

“We are excited to further our integration through our new Plug-In capability,” said Tom Joyce, president and CEO of Akorri. “Our goal is to simplify the management of heterogeneous virtualized server and storage environments. By adding this Plug-In we have taken an important step towards providing a unified management experience, which is essential for our VMware customers.”

Siemens IT Solutions and Services Deploys VMware Infrastructure 3

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VMware today announced that Siemens IT Solutions and Services has deployed VMware’s management and virtualization suite, VMware Infrastructure 3.

Siemens has joined with the VMware vCloud Initiative by developing a virtualized private cloud environment with VMware Infrastructure to provide capacity on demand for mission-critical applications. Siemens used the VMware platform to build out its cloud environment, improve server utilization from 20 percent to over 60 percent, and reduce hardware expenditures by approximately 70 percent compared to the cost of building a cloud environment without virtualization.

Siemens IT Solutions and Services, an operating company of Siemens Corporation, offers consulting services, systems integration, software development, and IT infrastructure management. The business unit has annual revenue of $7 billion. Siemens is using VMware Infrastructure to help both internal and external customers address significant business challenges, including the need for green IT, cost reduction, business innovation, more effective customer service, and faster time to market. The VMware platform also gives Siemens cost-effective and reliable disaster recovery and a resilient application environment that enables delivery of service availability up to 99.99 percent.

Zenoss 2.3 Adds Native VMware Monitoring

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Zenoss, a provider of commercial open source systems and network management software, last week rolled out a new version of its product suite.  The new release adds native VMware monitoring across the full virtualization infrastructure lifecycle.  This latest version, Zenoss 2.3, now enables enterprise IT staff and cloud services providers to monitor their virtual and physical IT infrastructures with a single, integrated product that costs significantly less than traditional offerings.

“Two of the biggest issues currently facing IT are virtualization and shrinking budgets,” said Erik Dahl, CTO of Zenoss. “Zenoss 2.3 addresses both of these head on with a powerful monitoring solution for both physical and virtual environments that not only costs less to acquire, but also saves time and manpower through quick installation, auto-discovery of infrastructure assets, and drop-in performance templates.”

Zenoss Enterprise delivers functionality across the major IT management lifecycle disciplines (such as inventory discovery, configuration detection, network mapping, availability and performance monitoring, and event management) and across the full physical and virtual infrastructure. Integration of Inventory data in a central Configuration Database allows Zenoss Enterprise users to view all performance, availability, and event data with a single web console. The product also includes remediation, allowing Zenoss to take corrective actions automatically when problems occur.