Virtualization.com
News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing
Well spotted by Kevin Tofel: Amazon has knocked of $20 of the price of VMware Fusion, which brings the price down to $59.99 from the $79.99 list price. On top of that is a $20 mail-in rebate which gets the software for $39.99, free shipping included. Pretty hot deal, indeed.
If you have a virtualization success story you would like to share, VMware issued a call for presentations today for the upcoming VMworld 2008.
“Most VMworld attendees have some experience with virtualization and they are eager for insights that go beyond the consolidation of non-mission critical workloads. Are you using virtual machines to build a better disaster recovery solution? Have you virtualized a critical enterprise system? Have you found a creative solution how to charge back business users for virtual machine usage? Have you developed a process for planning VM capacity? Tell your peers about it!
Session proposals should provide an in-depth explanation of the technology and business challenges you have resolved, as well as a description of your architecture – hardware, software and networking setup of your solution. Advice, key success factors, data points and lessons learned while solving technical, organizational and process challenges related to virtualization deployment are always appreciated by your peers.”
If selected to present, you’ll receive a full conference pass for four days, access to all VMworld sessions and hands-on labs, and hotel accommodations for one night.
Good thing we have a ‘Rumors’ category to assign to this type of speculations: several news outlets are running a story about Citrix possibly being an acquisition target for Cisco or IBM.
A late April fool, or plausible?
Nasdaq traders bid up Citrix stock Tuesday on takeover rumors that have either IBM or Cisco purchasing the application delivery vendor.
Citrix’s stock went from a low of $30.60 Tuesday to a high of $33.75. Rumors of Citrix being purchased fueled the higher trading prices, says Jeffrey Gaggin, an enterprise software analyst for Avian Securities. Gaggin cautions that he has no way of knowing whether the rumors hold any truth.
But it would make sense for IBM or Cisco to purchase Citrix because Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource last year made it a strong player in the virtualization market, Gaggin says.
TheStreet adds the following financial analysis:
But even at what seems like a bargain price, Citrix isn’t cheap: With a market cap of $6 billion and expected revenue growth of 17% to $1.63 billion this year, the stock could command a fair premium, taking the potential buyout price north of $7 billion, assuming a premium of 15%.
IDC analyst Stephen Elliot sees some rationale for IBM and Cisco to go after Citrix. IBM could make the XenSource hypervisor its preferred brand and could better compete against VMware and Microsoft. This would run counter to H-P’s strategy, which has professed to being indifferent on the hypervisor question, Elliot said.
On Citrix’s side, IBM would lend “a lot more credibility” to the XenSource virtualization platform and provide development resources. “There are a lot of opportunities,” Elliot said.
[Source: ChannelWeb]
Trend Micro, a global leader in Internet content security, has announced a number of innovations in security solutions for VMware virtualized environments which it will debut at the 2008 RSA Conference in San Francisco.
The prototype technology consists of a virtualization security solution that operates in a VMware ESX 3.5 environment, scans for infected machines and remediates any that are found. With this technology, Trend Micro intends to provide greater protection for VMware virtual machines.
Trend Micro is also announcing that its enterprise security products for the endpoint, gateway and server are supported in VMware environments. This enables joint customers to gain the same level of support for Trend Micro products running in VMware virtualized environments as they would on physical hardware.
From the press release:
Trend Micro is integrating the recently announced VMware VMsafeTM APIs into its security technology in an effort to enable channel partners and customers to enhance the security of their VMware environments. VMsafe technology protects applications running on virtual machines in ways previously not possible in physical environments. The VMsafe APIs allow vendors to develop advanced security products that combat the latest generation of malware. VMsafe technology integrates into the VMware hypervisor and provides the transparency to prevent threats and attacks such as viruses, Trojans and keyloggers from ever reaching a virtual machine. The Trend Micro brand of security software will have the ability to run isolated from, and at a higher level of privilege than, the target malware. This will allow offline VMware virtual machines to be scanned and remediated prior to being reactivated.
“While organizations frequently use virtualization to help save energy costs and lower administrative IT expenses, they also have an opportunity to leverage this technology for improved security,” said Punit Minocha, vice president of business development for Trend Micro. “Most security solutions in the market underperform in virtual environments so, together with VMware, we want to help our customers to take advantage of the cost benefits of virtualization and to improve their organization’s security profile at the same time.”
VMware-support for existing Trend Micro products is effective immediately. For a complete list of these products, please visit www.trendmicro.com/go/virtualization. Current VMware-supported products use the existing licensing model. Trend Micro customers who purchase these versions and switch their deployments to VMware can do so at no extra cost or software. This provides customers a choice of running the applications on standalone hardware or on virtual environments, depending on their IT needs. Certain exceptions may apply.
The new Trend Micro technology securing virtualized environments is expected to be available in the second half of 2008.
[Source: SYS-CON]
We’re not sure what to think of VMware Team Fusion’ latest contest. If you upload a one-minute video about your experience in switching to VMware Fusion in order to run Windows on your Mac, or you write a blog post about it, you can win a set of prizes ranging from t-shirts, bumper stickers and an iPod Touch to a MacBook Air.
On itself, it’s just a nice, harmless marketing campaign to increase awareness about VMware Fusion on video sharing sites and gain extra backlinks for obvious reasons (might have something to do with the increasing pressure from competitors on VMware, aptly written out on bMighty). But we’d be surprised if tons of users go out of their way to create free marketing material for the company, even if the prizes (at least, the Apple products) are bound to spark interest here and there. It just seems it a bit too opportunistic, and they’re putting in an extra threshold by asking contestants to go through a bunch of instructions in a PDF file.
How about you, would you enter a contest to help VMware in getting more awareness for its desktop virtualization solutions?
VKernel, a Portsmouth-based provider of virtual appliances for managing virtual server environments, announced today a partnership with Prosper Intelligence and its Virtualization Consolidation Academy. Under the agreement, Prosper Intelligence will distribute VKernel’s Suite of Virtual Appliances for managing VMware ESX environments to its network of partners and solution providers throughout Eastern and Central Europe.
From the press release:
“The VKernel Virtual Appliance Suite for Systems Management is a set of “plug-and-play” virtual appliances designed to quickly solve real world systems management challenges as organizations migrate to VMware virtual environments. VKernel products enable IT groups to immediately address today’s critical pain points by providing visibility into the capacity and resource consumption of each virtual machine. VKernel is currently offering a Chargeback Virtual Appliance for gaining cost visibility and a Capacity Analyzer Virtual Appliance for eliminating capacity bottlenecks.”
[Source: BusinessWire]