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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).

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]

Netelligent Joins VMware VIP Enterprise Partner Program

March 29, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

St. Louis, Missouri-based Netelligent has announced it is now an Enterprise level partner within VMware’s VIP Partner Program.

Over the past year, Netelligent has made substantial investments in people, training, software and hardware in order to add virtualization expertise and know-how to it’s services offering. “Our goal is to maintain our standards of excellence and credibility”, says Aaron Stone, President of Netelligent. “Adding to our Services Offering is not something we take lightly. We are very aware that what sets us apart from our competitors is the strength of our Engineering team and how we listen, design and execute”, continues Stone.

[Source: press release]

VMware Server 2.0 beta 2 Underway? (Confirmed)

March 27, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware is (finally) set to release beta 2 of VMware Server 2.0, which is reportedly to be announced at 6pm PST today.

Could be true, since the discussion forum at VMware is filled with people who are seeing an expiration deadline for their usage of the 4-month old beta 1, due next Sunday. The first post on the forum dates back to 24 March, but other members are not convinced a new build is actually coming, nor are they happy with the short-term note and the lack of communication from VMware.

More when there’s anything official to announce.

Update from that same discussion forum:

“We were all set to post Beta 2 today but encountered a last minute cosmetic issue on Windows installer (we saw it mostly on desktop Windows OS), so we are spinning up a new build tonight and will have everything posted mid afternoon (Pacific time) Friday March 28th. Sorry for the delay but it was a deliberate decision to take the hit now. Hang in there.”

Final update:

Beta 2 is available.

More info here, registration for download over here.

New features and enhancements in the VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2 release:

Updated VMware Infrastructure (VI) Web Access management interface: With the faster performance, improved stability and broader range of configuration options, the VI Web Access management interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive management experience. In addition, embedded help files are context sensitive based on the task being performed.
Independent virtual machine console: With the new VMware Remote Console, you can access your virtual machine consoles independent of the VI Web Access management interface plus resize the virtual machine console windows as needed.
Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.
Multi-tiered permissions: Configure different levels of permissions to access virtual machines in different ways, including browsing, interacting, configuring and administering virtual machines.
New hardware editors: Edit and add devices such as USB 2.0 devices and legacy devices such as floppy drives, serial and parallel ports.
Automatically start your virtual machines: Select which virtual machines that you want to automatically start when VMware Server starts. In addition, there is also an option to boot the virtual machine directly into the BIOS Setup Screen.
Link to Virtual Appliance Marketplace: Access thousands of pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run enterprise applications packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine. This speeds up time to value and simplifies software development, distribution, and management.

Existing VMware Server 2.0 Beta features

New operating system support: The broadest operating system support of any host-based virtualization platform currently available, including support for Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.10 in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
More scalable virtual machines:Support for up to 8 GB of RAM (up from 3.6 GB in Server 1.0) per virtual machine, 10 virtual network interface cards and up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors per virtual machine.
64-bit guest operating system support:Use 64-bit guest operating systems on 64-bit hardware to enable more scalable and higher performing computing solutions.
Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode to improve performance in specific Linux environments.
Support for VIX API 1.5: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.

Virtualization and Brain Fitness Don’t Mix

March 26, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Entrepreneur, investor and Open Source pioneer Brian Berliner (whose blog is a must-subscribe, by the way) discovered that not all applications run on virtual machines. After winning a Posit Science Brain Fitness Program Classic, Brian found out that besides having an unnecessary long name, the program doesn’t run on VMware Fusion, which he installed on his Mac computer.

Anyone have a good answer to his question about why some developers forbid running apps on virtual machines? What’s the difference anyway?

Update: Brian received a comment from a Posit Science rep who lets us know the program runs under Boot Camp and Parallels, and that they’re expecting to release a Mac version by the end of the year.

Excellent example of how companies should treat customers who use blog and social networks to voice their opinions!

Also, check out the comment from Joe on this post, who gave a lengthy and most likely completely correct answer to the technical side of the matter.