It's hard telling just how many PaaS vendors there are out there. I found one list that includes 20, so that's a starting point. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Service Elastic Beanstock, Google Apps, and Force.com PaaS from Salesforce.com are all, of course, prominent players.
Currently, when People think about PaaS, they associate it with the Web development community, but Lucas Carlson, founder and CEO of AppFog has a much grander view of PaaS and its role in the cloud. In his vision, PaaS provides the last mile to the cloud, and will expand the cloud's presence by bringing many more developers to it, while promoting SaaS and IaaS opportunities.
"Clearly, to deploy large SaaS implementations, you need PaaS technology to power them," Carlson declares, adding "PaaS is the best sales tool for IaaS." He goes on to say that PaaS is more "ground-shifting" and provides greater opportunities than virtualization, and his company already has "tens of thousands of customers." All this, and the golden age of PaaS is just beginning. As he puts it, "To me, it's a Greenfield opportunity."
You'd never guess this guy is the boss of a PaaS company, would you?
For its part, AppFog recently took the wraps off an add-on program for third-party service providers that provisions the accounts purchased by developers via a single interface, and displays partner information for the customer to "easily integrate additional functionality from these third-party services into the applications they build on the AppFog platform. This will make it easier still for developers to deploy and scale web-based applications without having to become part-time IT support on the side."
Carlson believes that the PaaS company with the best ecosystem will be victorious in the market, and toward that end, AppFog has added Mongolab--which will offer its hosted MongoDB to the AppFog community--and New Relic, which says its Web application performance tool gives developers "deep, 24x7 visibility from the end-user experience all the way to a line of application code, which is a crucial capability for developers using AppFog for deploying apps to the cloud."
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/06/2012 at 12:48 PM5 comments
I like keeping up on users, so when this case study from Avere Systems popped up, I was intrigued because it described a straight-forward solution to a vexing problem that more than one VDI system has encountered.
It all starts with the Belchertown School district in Massachusetts, which thought it was making all the right moves. Its IT team put together a system based on five Cisco UCS systems running VMware View connected to 10 data stores hosted on a NetApp FAS2020, and supporting one-terabyte volumes, with a 20 percent snapshot reserve. Most VMDK files are held to 40GB and are typically linked clones from one of a few golden master images.
This configuration supports PowerSchool, a virtualized application utilized by teachers and students alike to access class materials, log attendance and store and back up their work and grades. All in all, a locked-and-loaded system--until the boot storm ensued when some 250 concurrent users logged on at the same time.
It typically took 15 minutes for the storm to subside. During that time, students were unable to access their class documents, teachers got errors when they tried to save their work, and the school district's small, but valiant, IT team couldn't keep up .
They evaluated bigger, more updated NetApp filers, but the costs were prohibitive, and the time required to implement them was unacceptable. The remedy was to be found at a VMware user group meeting in Maine, where they discovered Avere's NAS Optimization solutions.
It was a Eureka moment for Scott Karen, the school district's director of Technology. As he puts it, "Avere was able to get us an FXT Series node for evaluation almost immediately. We tested it, and found it eliminated the boot storm and turned 15 minutes of logging in per class into about three minutes with no more write errors or corrupted files. Overall latency is no longer an issue. And it didn't require me to rethink and re-engineer my storage network."
Karen moved quickly, and within three weeks of choosing Avere, the FXT 2500 two-node cluster was up and running. The nodes are configured in read/write mode during the school day, and at 6:00 P.M., the cluster automatically switches modes to read-only in an effort to support the district's existing backup strategy with Veeam. Twelve hours later, the cluster switches back to read/write mode for maximum performance during the school day.
The FXT 2500 clusters are reliable, they don't need tweeking, and Karen hasn't had to touch them since they were implemented. He refers to them as "magic boxes," adding "Because of Avere's tiered storage architecture, all future disk purchases can be lower cost SATA drivers rather than higher cost SAS, so Avere has not only solved our performance problems, but will be saving us money going forward."
It is, as they say, all good.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 01/04/2012 at 12:48 PM3 comments
As we march inexorably toward the cloud, the pressure is on to provide a seamless computing environment between datacenters and cloud-based storage and applications. Toward that goal, F5 is offering major enhancements to its Data Solutions portfolio with the introduction of the iControl File Services Solution open storage management API, the ARX Cloud Extender, and the ARX Virtual Edition (VE) appliance.
F5 says the iControl file services API enables software vendors and customers to integrate ARX's file virtualization capabilities to enhance their existing data management solutions and enable entirely new applications. According to F5, "Via the API, customers can use ARX's real-time change notification capability to improve the scalability, responsiveness and efficiency of a range of third-party applications, such as search, index, backup, audit and quota management tools."
By extending ARX's intelligent, automated storage tiering capabilities to support cloud storage services, F5 says it has made it easier to seamlessly integrate cloud storage into existing IT infrastructures. Customers now have simplified data access, because files stored in the cloud are presented as if they reside locally in the data center. "In order to maximize the amount of data tiered to the cloud while minimizing IT overhead and access costs, customers can automatically identify and migrate appropriate files to cloud storage. The new solution is fully qualified for use with Amazon S3, Iron Mountain VFS cloud storage, and NetApp StorageGRID," the company said.
With the introduction of ARX VE, the solution will be available as a virtual appliance in addition to physical, hardware-based offerings. This extends the benefits of ARX beyond centralized data centers, and provides a variety of flexible, deployment options. "Using ARX VE, branch offices and smaller organizations can enjoy performance benefits of the ARX product line that have previously been associated with larger, physical deployments," F5 said. "ARX VE will be available via three distinct deployment options: a trial version for demonstrating purposes, a full version suitable for production environments, and through OEM partners."
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/16/2010 at 12:48 PM0 comments
Companies such as CloudSwitch, Nasuni and Riverbed have an increasingly compelling story to tell as storage and enterprise apps move progressively toward the cloud. No matter what its content, the ability to securely transmit and receive encrypted data without the fear of having it hacked sounds better every day to senior IT management.
The newly released v2 of CloudSwitch Enterprise is a downloadable software appliance that installs easily into VMware and Xen environments in 20 minutes (What, no Hyper-V?). Its beauty is in its ability to securely simulate data center environments—including management solutions—in the cloud, making interaction transparent to users and developers. As the company puts it, "CloudSwitch eliminates the engineering efforts and changes to applications, networking and management tools that were previously required to use the cloud, protecting customers from lock-in."
Via a simple point and click, v2 provisions new Windows and Linux applications in the cloud without any modifications. This is accomplished through network boot support and ISO support (CD-ROM/DVD). v2 also provides Web services and command-line interfaces for programmic scaling to meet peak demands. In addition, it eliminates network bottlenecks by "extending internal network topology into the cloud and allowing secure, public IP access." Also new is broader geographic coverage, including Terremark xCloud Express & eCloud, Amazon EC2 East, West, EU and Asia Pacific regions.
CloudSwitch, which is releasing v2 just six months after v1 debuted, is counting on making a hit with IT via its ability to get face time with strategically oriented CIOs and senior managers on the application development side of the house. According to CloudSwitch co-founder and VP of Products Ellen Rubin, the company’s strong security story also resonates with top security officers, who are understandably leery of cloud security. "We really try to enable our customers to lock things down," Rubin says, adding that CloudSwitch, which is funded by Boston-based venture capital firms, currently has a dozen customers, including two large pharmaceutical firms and a large telco service provider.
CloudSwitch Enterprise 2.0 is currently available with a free 15-day trial. Pricing begins at $25,000 for an annual license, including basic support and up to 20 concurrent virtual machines under management in the cloud. Available server packs are available for scaling. Cloud usage fees are paid separately to the cloud provider, and additional pricing for scaling cloud deployments is available.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/13/2010 at 12:48 PM0 comments
Although cloud computing market leaders like Microsoft, VMware and Citrix are touting the advantages of Infrastructure as a Service for the growing ranks of their cloud customers, a Yankee Group Focus Report entitled "2010 FastView Survey: Cloud Computing Grows Up" makes it clear that IaaS--like Platform as a Service--is still very much an emerging technology that has yet to meet the acceptance found by Software as a Service in IT organizations.
IaaS is based on the concept of combining all servers and storage in a giant pool of resources and allocating them on-demand to applications via private clouds in the datacenter, or shared, public clouds offered by service providers. Despite the benefits of IaaS--including converting capex to opex, paying only for resources consumed, and flexibly scaling resources up or down based on current business requirements--early adopters are cautiously implementing it for "relatively tactical server/storage capacity issues."
However, as Yankee Group learned from its survey of large enterprises with 500 or more employees that have deployed or are considering some kind of cloud solution, things are looking up for IaaS. Specifically, 20 percent reported that they have already implemented IaaS, and among that group, companies with 10,000 or more employees have the highest percentage of current adoption at 24 percent. The report goes on to note:
"An additional 37% are expecting to adopt IaaS some time in the next 24 months, and 60% are evaluating solutions for the near term (i.e. looking to adopt IaaS in less than 12 months). Despite this activity, there remains a segment of the enterprise population (16%) that still has no plans to adopt IaaS, even though they are interested in or already use other types of cloud services."
Many people would be quick to cite security as the primary obstacle to IaaS and cloud adoption, but the Yankee Group notes that five other obstacles are more frequently mentioned. They include "Migrating existing data and applications to the cloud could be costly and difficult," "Regulatory compliance/corporate governance," "Employee resistance," "Lack of measureable business benefits" and "Reliability/availability of cloud platforms."
A majority of survey respondents (29 percent) consider systems integrators to be the most trusted partners for cloud computing, but when early IaaS adopters were asked who they viewed as their most trusted partners, telecom companies came out on top, garnering 33 percent of responses. Near-term IaaS adopters (less than 24 months) viewed both datacenter providers and SIs as their "best-positioned providers."
Among the conclusions and recommendations cited by Yankee Group, suppliers that help enterprises navigate the evolution of integrating IaaS with their legacy IT infrastructures were mentioned as most likely to succeed against their competition. Overall, the report states, "To foster further adoption, vendors and service providers must adapt their solutions to address enterprise concerns, especially those held by early adopters." It goes on to recommend that service providers work to ease data migration issues, foster interoperability and offer an evolutionary approach to the cloud.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/09/2010 at 12:48 PM3 comments
Microsoft recently got in touch with me to see if they could write some kind of year-end story for
Virtualization Review about their Server and Tools Business (STB). I told them I would be interested in a brief chronological history of 2010 highlights, and they agreed.
As you can see below, 2010 was a big year for the cloud in Redmond, starting with the GA of Windows Azure and SQL Azure in February, and ending in November with a Hyper-V Cloud program for private cloud deployments. In between, Steve Ballmer committed to the cloud and STB introduced Office 365, among other initiatives.
Microsoft also said it had 10,000 Azure customers in September, and it is looking to adding more rapidly in 2011 as it locks horns with VMware in a battle for market leadership.
Top news for Cloud/Virtualization in 2010:
FEBRUARY -- Microsoft announces Windows Azure GA (Official MS Blog, Windows Azure Team Blog)
MARCH -- Steve Ballmer's speech at University of Washington about the company's commitment to cloud computing (video): Ballmer plants the stake in the ground for Microsoft's cloud efforts moving forward
APRIL -- Bob Muglia highlights the importance of management as organizations think about cloud computing at MMS 2010 (keynote video)
JUNE -- Bob Muglia explains the process of delivering cloud to business customers at TechEd North America 2010 (press release, keynote video):
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 announced with new, improved virtualization tools for WS08 R2 and Win7
- Windows Azure and SQL Azure feature updates provide better capabilities for cloud customers
JULY -- Guidance for Microsoft's partners on how to take advantage of cloud computing at WPC 2010 (press release, keynote video): Windows Azure platform appliance helps bring the power of Windows Azure to customer and service providers' own datacenters
OCTOBER -- Office 365, a cloud-based business productivity suite, is launched (press release, Q&A feature, video): Office desktop software, Office Web Apps, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync now available in the cloud
Developers learn about how to create for the cloud at PDC 2010 (press release, video, blog post):
- Windows Azure roadmap rolled out, including a number of platform updates
- Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role and Server Application Virtualization enable customers to get on the path to platform as a service
NOVEMBER -- Advancements to private clouds are announced at TechEd EMEA (press release, keynote video): Hyper-V Cloud program debuts, including programs for private cloud deployments and incentives for partners
Bob Muglia summarizes a busy fall for Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, spanning major events such as PDC, TechEd EMEA and PASS (Q&A feature)
Microsoft announces NCBI BLAST on Azure at Supercomputing 2010 (press release)
Battle-testing the scalability of Windows Azure, NCBI BLAST on Azure puts the power of cloud computing in the hands of scientists and researchers.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/07/2010 at 12:48 PM2 comments
The more companies adopt virtualization, the more they need to understand what is going on behind the scenes in their virtualized environments. That need is driving the growth of companies like Akorri, which is currently touting its success with Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), the world's largest provider of diesel-electric locomotives.
According to Bill Bradford, EMD Global Director of Infrastructure and Applications, the company did an infrastructure refresh of its storage, servers and networks in 2007 as part of its commitment to a server virtualization strategy that includes 90 percent of all the company's servers. Bradford says EMD was able to get between 10 and 30 VMs per physical host, which was good, but all that VM density made it difficult to monitor and maintain available storage and server resources.
"People were having a hard time getting reports to answer their questions," Bradford says.
All that has changed now that EMD has implemented Akorri's BalancePoint software, which Akorri claims is "the only analytics-based IT management software solution on the market designed to optimize performance and utilization of virtual machines, physical servers and storage resources." The Akorri product is agentless and can be purchased as a virtual appliance. It provides multi-vendor, heterogeneous support for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V, and is compatible with major storage vendors such as EMC, NetApp, HP, Dell 3PAR, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems and Dell EqualLogic.
Rather than conduct a formal search to meet its product research needs, Bradford says "We just asked around and Akorri is what came back. We put it in and sure enough it told us how many virtual servers were being used. It makes it very easy for us to display analytic reports." In addition, he adds, the package enables tech people to dig down in CPU, storage and I/O levels, allowing them to tweak those levels as required. EMD now gets weekly storage utilization reports that help the company tighten up its IT performance.
Although EMD has not measured a hard-dollar ROI figure, Bradford says that with BalancePoint, he has saved some $250,000 that would have otherwise been spent on additional storage resources. "We like the tool," he says. "We're not looking for anything else right now."
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 12/02/2010 at 12:48 PM1 comments
vFoglight 6.5, from Quest, hits three different and highly competitive sweet spots in the burgeoning virtualization market: performance management, monitoring and capacity planning. It also brings both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX Server into the fold, providing a lot more bang for the product buck. (This process reflects a deviation from the normal process of starting out with ESX and subsequently adding Hyper-V). Throw in application infrastructure management for Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange, and you’ve got a package that hits a lot of high notes.
Quoting two different users, Quest drives home the ability of vFoglight 6.5 to master the complexities of expanding IT infrastructures while protecting critical applications and helping users meet the dynamic demands associated with configuring, provisioning, monitoring and optimizing their IT infrastructures and virtualized data centers.
The event remediation capabilities of vFoglight 6.5 enable admins to view alarms and respond by launching automated resolutions that reduce the time required to resolve problems. The product’s User Perspectives feature gives admins tailored views that make it easier to understand performance monitoring and chargeback opportunities. It saves "hours" of time and improves administration by making it possible for admins to perform "common VM tasks in the context of daily activities." Finally, it again aids admins by presenting them with clearly displayed and valuable infrastructure information.
In a development that definitely adds cachet, according to Steve Stover, Quest Senior Director of Product Management, vFoglight, has 6,500 "paying customers" as opposed to a user base that obtains the product via free downloads.
Lately, Hyper-V has been somewhat undressed as a pretender to the hypervisor throne ensconced securely on the royal head of ESX Server, as comparison tests revealed the advantages enjoyed by the far more mature VMware product. When asked why Quest provided Hyper-V compatibility with vFoglight 6.5, Stover listed two reasons. "First, I need a viable second option, and I think Microsoft can be that, and second, I believe Microsoft will be a lower cost option, if only for lower priority workloads." Hardly a ringing endorsement for Redmond, but it still represents progress.Stover also claimed vFoglight sales were up 75 percent over last year, adding that Quest expects them to double in the current fiscal year.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/30/2010 at 12:48 PM4 comments
Data center intelligence software maker CiRBA is getting on the cloud bandwagon with CiRBA 6.0, which the company calls "an enterprise solution for efficiency management that meets the evolving demands of managing cloud and virtualized infrastructure." v6.0 combines cross-platform analytics with customizable role-based dashboards that increase visibility and control over the efficiency and risk of systems.
The company's new v6.0 dashboards deliver role-based views of efficiency and risks that offer "accurate, actionable answers." In this automated environment, the likelihood of human error is minimized and the decision-making process is enhanced.
Looking at it from 30,000 feet, the idea behind v6.0 is to enable faster decision-making in dynamic environments based on analytics computations that include cross-correlating data housed in corporate data center s. For example, based on analytics output, CiRBA can tell you how many IT resources you will need over the next 90 days to satisfy policy, HA and DR requirements.
As CTO and co-founder Andrew Hillier told me over a recent lunch, "Without analytics, it's a tangled mess and a waste of peoples' time. You can't do a good job of managing when you get different answers each time. Companies relying on manual approaches and spreadsheets simply cannot aggregate the required data, analyze it accurately, and provide answers with any level of reliability."
Pricing runs between $25,000 and $1 million based on company size.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/18/2010 at 12:48 PM6 comments
In my
Sept. 28 blog, I wrote about "several depressing facts" associated with the then upcoming VMware Data Protection Report 2010, which was commissioned and written by Veeam, and responded to by 500 CIOs. (VMware played no role in the report.) Among those depressing facts:
- 63 percent of enterprises experience problems every month when attempting to recover a server.
- Recovery of a backed up VM takes nearly five hours.
- Failed recoveries cost the average enterprise more than $400,000 per year.
Now that Veeam has released the full survey, there are more revealing results, i.e. 44 percent of respondents reported that issues related to backup and recovery prevented them from virtualizing some mission-critical workloads. In fact, the survey found that on average, only 68 percent of production-level virtual estates are currently backed up, and only 29 percent of enterprises back up their entire virtual estates. Veeam qualifies those numbers by noting, "This may not be an immediate cause for concern, as even in the physical IT environment, not all data is backed up. Naturally, the research highlighted how businesses applied stronger processes to backing up critical servers over non-critical (both virtual and physical)."
Veeam goes on to note that given the cost and resource efficiency of VMs in areas such as hardware and storage, it's important to protect all data whether it's mission-critical or not.
The report is filled with a lot of interesting data protection information pertaining to subjects such as the use of a single product for backing up both physical and virtual assets, complicated restore methods, meeting the need for data protection in tight budgetary situations, the shortage of backup testing, and long recovery times. You can sign up for a free copy at veeam.com.
Of course, at the end of the report, Veeam takes the opportunity to extol the virtues of its vPower technology, which is the force behind Veeam Backup and Replication 5.0.
All in all, the VMware Data Protection Report 2010 a slick, well-executed marketing package for Veeam--how can you argue against protecting data?--and a worthwhile educational opportunity for organizations, who can ingest a lot of interesting information and consider its worth to them, knowing that it is presented in a format that is dedicated, however subtly, to promoting the greater commercial success of Veeam.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/16/2010 at 12:48 PM0 comments
Speaking at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference recently, Bob Muglia, President, Server & Tools Business clearly delineated his vision of how he sees Windows Azure evolving as both operating system and platform as a service (PaaS).
Hyperbolic rhetoric aside, Muglia touts Azure as a highly integrated and comprehensive platform of services with which users can write applications. As an example, he said that Azure includes a caching service that will speed up applications and get web applications and pages out faster—all by writing just a couple of lines of code.
He also pointed out how technologies like .NET, established tools such as Visual Studio, and new management tools like System Center have been designed to work together, and are now being reengineered for the cloud. However, he added, these products are not just being moved into Azure to run on a virtual machine.
In his words, "We are saying to ourselves, what does the cloud require of the underlying platform? What does it have to deliver? Well, it needs to deliver a fully available, globally scaled, shared, multi-tenant service. And that's how we're redesigning these underlying services as a part of Windows Azure."
In order to make his point, Muglia compared SQL Server to SQL Azure, saying SQL Server was designed to run on a single server or a cluster of servers. The big difference between the two? Even though SQL Azure is the same database environment users have known for years, it runs on, and replicates data across thousands of computers in six global data centers without any user intervention.
"You don't think about it," Muglia said. "You don't think about how you're allocating files and how you're building up underlying physical infrastructure. SQL Azure handles that because that's what a real path database system should do. When we talk about Windows Azure and services we're making available to Windows Azure developers, those services will be available also within private cloud data centers that run Azure, so if your organization wants that kind of environment, these same set of services will be made available to you."
Winding down his pitch, Muglia said Microsoft is providing services to Azure so users can clear the decks and concentrate on the things that really matter to them, namely writing their applications as quickly as possible, and ultimately solving their business problems.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/08/2010 at 12:48 PM0 comments
If you click
this link, it will take you to a really great piece of research conducted by the Taneja Group on the hypervisor market. Entitled "The Hypervisor Shootout," this study takes an extremely detailed look at the VM density of leading products under consistent application workloads. Vendors represented include Red Hat, VMware, Microsoft and Citrix.
Although we would not normally run an exhaustive research report from any company in its entirety, this one-off situation was occasioned by plans to work on joint projects with Taneja that we are currently discussing.
By the way, the report is also available gratis on the Taneja Group website at www.tanejagroup.com.
While you're at it, I urge you to check out our latest "Vendor View" piece from VM6 Software, which discusses the special virtualization needs of SMBs and the challenges big virtualization companies face in meeting them. You can find this article on our Web site in the "What's New" section.
I look forward to your feedback on both of these pieces.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/08/2010 at 12:48 PM4 comments
Happy birthday, Win 7!
It's been a good first year for you--a very good first year. According to your mama, Microsoft, there have been some 240 million of your licenses sold, and there is no let-up in sight. That's selling like a big boy! And mama says you have been the most successful release of Windows ever into the market place. The best-ever OS? Oh yes!
Recession, reschmession--mama says your PC market is strong, with 1.2 billion PCs in the worldwide ecosystem, and all the credit goes to you. She is breathing a big sigh of relief, knowing that you can make up for the big drop-offs in sales of her Parcheesi and Chinese Checkers games. It's all good.
IDC backs mama's optimistic numbers to the hilt, saying there was a 4.15 percent global growth of PC units in 2009, and that number will increase to almost 17 percent in 2010, with sustained growth continuing at a rate of nearly 13 percent in 2011. Win 7, you need to hypervise yourself in order to meet all that demand! Any naysayers who call you a mama's boy will eat their words after they see the way you handle big uglies such as the Dell Latitude Z, Dell Vostro 3400, and the Lenovo Thinkpad x201 and Thinkpad. (Who's afraid of anybody named "Vostro," anyway?)
You're also racking up points with your winning personality. How else to explain the way IT managers have taken such a shine to you? In fact, Forrester says the number of IT managers deploying you on new PCs will jump to 83 percent during your second year--and you'll barely be out of diapers. No caca on you, Win 7!
It seems like everybody loves you, except some of those big babies at VMware who say you are just one more unwanted connection to the physical past your awful mama has forced down everybody's throats for so long. Those mean, jealous VM buggers think you will fall on your cute little face when it comes time for desktop virtualization. What a bunch of dumb, old propeller heads!
There's even more good news, you meaty, beaty, big and bouncy bundle of love. Mama talked to LifeHacker, which helps people do all kinds of fun things with you, and they reported a 94 percent customer satisfaction rating with you. What, only 94 percent? The other 6 percent is probably in jail, or something, and they can't use you right.
On top of everything else, Win 7, you appreciate the value of a buck. Mama says you are making customers very happy by reducing their total cost of operations to the point where all they need in monopoly money to keep things humming along at top speed. She is very insistent on this point, saying "The average savings is $140 per PC per year and the average ROI is 131% in just over 12 months." (You can tell she was really shouting when she said that!)
We could go on and on patting you on the back, but the big old computer market is doing that for us each and every day. Now go blow out those candles on your virtual birthday cake 'cause today is your day!
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/03/2010 at 12:48 PM6 comments
After carving out a big swath of the mobile software management market, Red Bend Software is now putting mobile virtualization in its sights via the purchase of VirtualLogix, which was created in 2002 to target the embedded virtualization market. VirtualLogix customers have included OEMs, original design manufacturers (ODMs), service providers, systems integrators and semiconductor manufacturers. The company's flagship VLX product features a Type one bare metal hypervisor.
Mobile software management is a set of technologies that enables a service provider to manage software and mobile devices over the air. You may not have heard of Red Bend, but if you've had your mobile phone operating system updated from one version to the next--via a technology known as firmware over the air, or FOTA--there's a good chance Red Bend Software made it happen.
Red Bend's FOTA customers comprise an A-list lineup of electronics manufacturers, including LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Sharp, Sony Ericsson, and other large handset manufacturers. In Red Bend's business model, customers such as service providers license Red Bend's software, which allows them to provision their new subscribers with the ability to configure their device settings to add new features, applications and services over the air.
According to Lori Sylvia, Red Bend executive vice president of marketing, a couple of years ago, her company started sensing the impending convergence of mobile software management and mobile virtualization, as service providers began expressing an interest in adding their own "container pack" to mobile devices. This container pack would enable them to create their own domain that they could manage separately from the device's OEM. That desire for independent domains opened the door for mobile virtualization.
"Mobile virtualization was coming at the same problem, but in a different but complementary way," Sylvia notes. "Mobile virtualization is about enabling multiple virtual machines to run separately and securely on a mobile device so that one VM could be an operator-owned VM where they provision and have their own applications. Another one could have the customer's profile, and the consumer could have their own applications that they control."
Sylvia says in the short term the privately held Red Bend will allow mobile software management and mobile virtualization to stand on their own, but over the next couple of years they will increasingly be converged.
Significant competition includes the 500-pound gorilla VMware, which bought its way into the market through the purchase of Trango in 2008. VMware seems blithely unconcerned with Red Bend's market presence. According to Srinivas Krishnamurti, VMware's senior director, Mobile Solutions, "Red Bend is a leader in FOTA, where carriers use their software to push firmware and software updates to mobile phones. This is completely orthogonal to virtualization and as such we do not compete with them."
Orthogonal, indeed. It may be easy for Krishnamurti to dismiss Red Bend out of hand now, but the mobile virtualization market potential is huge, and a very aggressive Red Bend is well placed to make a big impression on both competitors and customers once it fully assimilates VirtualLogix and starts generating momentum.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 11/02/2010 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Mindful of its Microsoft System Center competition, VMware introduced vCenter Configuration Manager (vCM) 5.3, which automates configuration across virtual and physical servers and desktops. The new version enables enterprises to maintain continuous compliance by locating changes and comparing them to security and configuration policies such as PCI DSS. It also "remediates problems and automates and optimizes server provisioning for complete virtualized datacenter control." vCenter Configuration Manager was part of the Ionix products VMware acquired a few months back.
Primary features include application provisioning (Windows software packaging, installation and removal), enhanced vSphere client plug-in with vCM actions and enhanced dashboards, and extended platform support for Novell SUSE and VMware vSphere/vCenter.
The product also features Windows Custom information, an extensible mechanism for data inspection for Windows and vCenter using PowerShell, and automatic remediation of Unix/Linux/Mas OS X file/directory ownership and permissions configuration issues using vCM’s powerful compliance engine.
The newest version is available to customers on the VMware Web site at vCenter Configuration Manager Download.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/29/2010 at 12:48 PM6 comments