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CA Wants A Piece Of The Virtualization Pie, Upgrades Data Center Automation Manager

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CA today announced a group of products aimed squarely at the new-world data center and its growing ranks of virtual machines. With today’s announcement, CA debuts Data Center Automation Manager 11.2, plus nine tools aimed at infrastructure, application performance and service management, as well as information governance.

CA’s Data Center Automation Manager tool seeks to minimize the amount of time IT spends caring for virtual machines, while improving agility and efficiency. It includes elements such as a rules-based policy engine and the ability to analyze performance measures and configuration details from apps and systems, while integrating with other CA tools including CA AutoSys Workload Automation, CA NSM, CA Service Desk, and CA Wily Introscope. The new products will all be available within a few weeks.

VMware, no stranger to the fact that customers want to use management tools from multiple vendors, introduced its plans for a Data Center OS at VMworld last month. The company envisions this OS as a layer into which other tools vendors can plug, using APIs.

HP takes a similar approach to CA’s, not making hypervisor technology itself like VMware or Microsoft, but offering hardware that makes sense for highly-virtualized data centers, as well as already-known management tools that can pull data from virtualized environments as well as physical ones. HP, with its acquisition of EDS also has a large services organization to help customers with virtualization projects.

Wachovia Analyst Downgrades Ratings for VMware (VMW)

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Wachovia’s Philip Rueppel this morning was the latest analyst to take a machete to his EPS estimates for the software sector, reducing numbers for most of the companies he follows.

“We are reducing estimats for a majority of companies in our universe, as we believe typical Q4 budget-flush will be muted this year, and growth prospects for new licenses next year will be muted,” he writes.

As part of his call, Rueppel downgrades his ratings on VMware (VMW) to Market Perform from Outperform, asserting that the company has “particularly acute issues due to their customer base segmentation, and/or growth expectations.”

In today’s trading VMware is down 67 cents, or 3%, to $21.90.

Veeam Goes After European Market With VMware Management Tools

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Veeam Software today announced its entry into the European market. The company has launched a dedicated sales organisation, headquartered in its new UK-based EMEA headquarters office, for customers seeking to improve the manageability of virtual IT infrastructures based on VMware‘s market leading virtualisation software. The European executive team will be led by Managing Director Colin Wright and comprise a number of executives who have joined Veeam Software from senior positions at VMware. In addition, Veeam is launching two new products, Veeam Monitor Version 3.0 and version 4 of its nworks enterprise management connectors.

A recent study by IDC found that eighty-two percent of European companies are using VMware. The study also found that across Europe, disaster recovery, backup and availability have been the main growth areas for virtualisation over the past year. In order to more effectively address these specific challenges, Veeam Software is establishing a sales organisation that mirrors VMware’s presence in Europe. From today, European VMware users will be able to access the entire Veeam Software portfolio, which includes Veeam Backup, Veeam Reporter, Veeam Configurator and Veeam Monitor. They will also be able to use the company’s nworks enterprise management connectors that enable organisations to manage VMware environments with systems management tools from Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.

Founded in 2006, Veeam Software’s fifty strong development team quickly created a range of systems management tools for VMware ESX Server environments. Veeam actively sought customer feedback to its early versions, and is now beginning the rollout of its 3.0 releases, offering advanced capabilities and the innovative features customers want most. The company will launch into Europe with two brand new updates.

Veeam Monitor Version 3.0, an easy-to-deploy VMware monitoring solution, provides VMware administrators with performance monitoring, capacity planning and trend analysis, as well as troubleshooting and problem resolution. In addition, Veeam will launch Version 4.0 of its nworks enterprise management connectors, composed of new updates for the nworks Management Pack (MP) for VMware for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager; and the nworks Smart Plug-in (SPI) for VMware for HP Software Operations Manager. Both products offer major new capabilities including hardware and sensor status.

Wyse Software Suite Components To Be Integrated Into VMware View

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VMware today announced a licensing agreement with Wyse Technology to use its remote display software to enhance RDP for VMware View. Bolstering its vClient Initiative and its commitment to support broad customer choice for the use of multiple protocol technologies, VMware plans to integrate two components of Wyse’s software suite into a future release of VMware View.

VMware View will include a portfolio of products that will give end users a single view of all their applications and data in a familiar, personalized environment – dubbed “myview” – that will be available from almost any device and location. With VMware View, enterprises will be able to replace traditional PCs with virtual desktops that follow users instead of devices. These virtual desktops will be centrally managed in the datacenter, but they will be able to run locally on a laptop or remotely from a server. VMware View will help enterprises achieve streamlined desktop and application management while reducing desktop TCO, improving security of data and enhancing user experience, flexibility and productivity.

In addition to supporting Wyse thin clients, the licensing agreement is designed to enable VMware to use Wyse’s enhancements with personal computers and third-party thin client devices. VMware View with Wyse’s TCX-MMR (multimedia) and TCX-MDS (multi-display) solutions will enhance virtual desktop solutions.

As part of VMware’s vClient initiative, VMware View will provide customers the flexibility to choose the protocol for its users through multi-protocol support. VMware also plans to license Teradici’s PC-over-IP protocol as previously announced. In addition, VMware View is expected to support protocols from HP and Sun.

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VMware Releases Server 2.0, Workstation 6.5, ACE 2.5

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VMware has announced the availability of its free server class virtualization product, VMware Server 2.0, a free hosted virtualization product for Microsoft Windows and Linux servers that has been around for quite some time.

Workstation 6.5, its long running desktop virtualization platform has also hit the wires, and finally ACE hit the 2.5 mark.

(VMblog gives a run-down of the new stuff in VMware Server 2.0, Workstation 6.5 and ACE 2.5)

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Avnet Technology Solutions Introduces Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Solution, Based on VMware Technology

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Avnet Technology Solutions, an operating group of Avnet, today announced a comprehensive solution to assist partners in targeting the emerging virtual desktop market in the US and Canada. Avnet Technology Solutions’ new solution combines VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software with the services and enablement resources needed to develop market expertise and effectively implement virtual desktop environments. Partners can use virtual desktop solutions to help their customers improve manageability, increase control and enhance the security of their enterprise desktops. The centralization of desktop management through virtualization also helps companies more effectively leverage their IT resources.

Avnet’s new solution is based on VMware VDI, which includes VMware Virtual Desktop Manager and provides simplified management and secure provisioning of virtual desktops and manages user access to the virtual desktops from a wide range of devices such as Windows, Linux and Mac computers, and thin clients. By deploying the VMware platform, partners can extend business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities to their customers’ desktops and streamline desktop management to reduce operating costs, increase control and deliver complete desktop environments with greater application compatibility.