VMware knows that it is in a dog-eat-dog fight with Citrix for desktop supremacy, so it took the opportunity this week to brag about one of its premier View installations while announcing a couple of generally available desktop packages that are aimed at the enterprise, healthcare and government markets, and employ some core VMware technologies.
The installation is the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi in Japan, which says that it has deployed 50,000 seats of View virtual desktops. The first new package is VMware View Mobile Secure Desktop, while the second is VMware View AlwaysOn Desktop.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/27/20121 comments
The first time I talked to Simon Crosby after he left Citrix to co-found Bromium, he made it clear that he and CEO Mark Templeton were parting on good terms, which is why it comes as no surprise to me that Tal Klein of Bromium had a guest Citrix blog post entitled "Good Things Come in Small Packages" earlier this week, after his company unveiled its Bromium Microvisor technology at GigaOm's Structure conference.
Klein describes how the Bromium Microvisor automatically protects each vulnerable task on the operating system and instantly hardware-isolates it within a micro-VM, which is a "lightweight, hardware-backed isolation container that polices access to all OS services." Micro-VMs run natively on the OS without performance impact, but continuously protect the system -- even from unknown threats.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/21/20120 comments
Via a new open source project named Serengeti, VMware is bringing Apache Hadoop up to speed by enabling it to run in mainstream virtualization and cloud environments and simplifying its deployment, configuration and management. Beyond that, the open source software framework for data-intensive, distributed applications is being developed to contribute extensions that will make key components "virtualization-aware to support elastic scaling and further improve Hadoop performance in virtual environments."
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/19/20122 comments
Using its Dell Storage Forum as a backdrop, Dell took the wraps off AppAssure 5 and other new products for its Dell Fluid Data architecture, including an enterprise class distributed file system, a Compellent platform designed to dynamically unify block and file data, the second generation of EqualLogic and PowerVault NAS solutions, and a Dell Brocade 16GB Fibre Channel switch.
Dell is offering AppAssure 5 less than four months after buying AppAssure, and the word is out that Dell is pouring resources into this backup product, which helps customers continuously protect business information, and move and recover data anywhere with high levels of scale, speed and efficiency.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/13/20121 comments
Virtualization continues to be a very disruptive technology, as it generates large data volumes and change rates that defy management and correlation. Reflex Systems is striving to contain the chaos and advance the cause of analytics via Reflex VMC, which provides real-time, streaming data analysis that enables enterprises to create "extremely granular" visibility and "pure data fidelity" for managing virtual infrastructures in large, enterprise environments with 100s or thousands of hosts and tens of thousands of VMs.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/11/20122 comments
Recently, VMware CTO and Senior VP of R&D Steve Herrod blogged on VMware's interest in having IT shift from data centers and infrastructure defined by devices and hardware bought by IT to what he calls the "Software-Defined Datacenter."
Looking back, Herrod described how computing resources were connected to "huge, specialized, mainframes" supported by lots of specialized software, noting that during the past 20 years, IT has moved -- at a high price -- to the point where industry-standard hardware can run almost anything. In his words, "This capability has been augmented by virtualization, enabling efficient and flexible use of powerful resources."
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/06/20123 comments
"Quest is in the migration business -- a several hundred million-dollar migration business," says Shayne Higdon, senior VP and GM, User Workspace Management and Monitoring, Quest Software. Higdon should know, because he has his fingerprints all over Quest's business in this area, and therefore is a major player in its future.
Of top current concern for Higdon is Windows 7 -- which he says is running on 39 percent of PCs -- and the release of new versions of his company's Workspace ChangeBASE and Workspace Asset Manager products, which he lauds for their abilities to slash average migration times to Win 7 by up to 50 percent, which in the real world translates up to six months. Of course, Quest also notes that these two new solutions advance the software firm's required ability to manage user-centric workspaces that run on any device, anytime, anywhere.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/06/20121 comments
Now that diversity is the go-to strategy for VDI-related systems, Liquidware Labs is understandably bragging about how its new ProfileUnity 5.0 with FlexApp enables virtual desktop users to seamlessly install their own apps into any non-persistent Windows environment -- including virtual desktop solutions from VMware, Citrix and Red Hat.
The key to Liquidware Labs' technology is its ability to work in these heterogeneous environments without negatively impacting master images or underlying systems. The upshot is fewer desktop images can support more workers on virtual desktops, which the company says enables more companies to "move hundreds or even thousands of physical PCs to virtual platforms running Windows 7."
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 06/04/20123 comments
Call it Big Analytics. EMC and VMware are taking advantage of their unique relationship -- EMC owns some 80 percent of VMware's stock -- to jointly integrate EMC's VNX storage intelligence with the analytics of VMware's vCenter Operations Management Suite via the new VNX Connector. The goal is to enable a single, high-end view of IT infrastructures via VNX.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/22/20121 comments
By providing the core application services required to build, run and manage Java Spring applications on- premise or in the cloud, the newly introduced VMware vFabric Suite 5.1 automates the deployment and management of complex applications on VMware cloud infrastructure and features in-memory distributed SQL database capabilities designed to
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/18/20121 comments
Virsto Software announced its initial support for Hyper-V -- as opposed to VMware -- when the company debuted in 2007, but has subsequently spread the wealth across VMware and Citrix as well. In its latest announcement, Virsto is taking something of a hybrid, best-of-breed approach with an eye on VDI by unveiling a beta version of Virsto for XenDesktop on vSphere.
This move wasn't too difficult to anticipate, given the complementary nature of the Citrix and VMware products. After all, as far back as August of last year, John Fanelli, VP, Product Marketing, Enterprise Desktops and Apps for Citrix declared, "Both XenDesktop 5.5 and vSphere 5 represent the very best technology our respective companies have put forward." Definitely a Kumbaya moment.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/16/20125 comments
Citrix used its Synergy conference last week to make a slew of cloud- and mobility-related product and services announcements. Prominent among them were the acquisition of Virtual Computer and its connection to the new XenClient Enterprise, the Podio collaboration platform, CloudGateway 2, and Project Avalon.
Virtual Computer Acquisition
The Virtual Computer acquisition -- the terms of which were not revealed -- is a good fit for Citrix, and Virtual Computer's NxTop Enterprise product, which allows companies to virtualize desktops using a Type-1 client hypervisor for online and offline functionality of desktops and laptops, is the driving force behind the new XenClient Enterprise Edition, which will be available by the end of June. In this case, XenClient plus the "rich set of management" functionality designed to help enterprise users manage "large fleets" of corporate laptops continues Citrix's dedication to client-side virtualization and mobility.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/14/20122 comments
In a deal that gives a big boost to Unidesk, the company has joined the ever-expanding ranks of vendors associating with Dell via an agreement that calls for Unidesk's VDI management software to be integrated with Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS). According to the two companies, Unidesk in combination with DVS slashes VDI storage costs by 70 percent while simplifying desktop configuration and application delivery.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/08/20120 comments
Although Cortado is quick to note the promising Thinprint OEM deal it made with VMware last November, its primary item of concern these days is the upcoming GA of HTML5 version of Cortado Workplace, which adds client for PCs, Macs and notebooks to its existing series of apps for some 230,000 users of iPhones, iPads, Android and Blackberry devices.
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/07/20120 comments
VMware bundled three events into one by unveiling VMware View 5.1, announcing that VMware Project Octopus Beta will empower the governing powers of IT administrators, and declaring that the newly introduced VMware Horizon Application Manager 1.5 will help IT groups open more doors to user access.
VMware is positioning View 5.1 as complementary technology to
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Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/01/20124 comments