After quietly sitting on Kaviza since its acquisition last May, Citrix is getting some mileage out of the company by introducing an all-new version of Citrix VDI-in-a-box, and combining the new product with its cloud-based support offering, Citrix GoToManage, which will be used to remotely monitor and support virtual desktop deployments at multiple sites or customer locations.
Also bundled in with this package is news that Citrix has introduced the Citrix Solution Advisor Program, known as SMB Specialist. SMB Specialists will be given access to a vast set of sales tools, free online training and pre-sales support created to help this new group of channel partners--which Citrix will begin certifying in January--engage and service SMB customers.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/25/20110 comments
These days, there is a cavalcade of new products designed to eliminate the I/O bottlenecks that are bogging down application performance for so many virtualization users. Nevex, a self-funded company to date, is one of the latest market entries to unveil such a market-changing product with the introduction of Nevex CacheWorks 1.0, which the company says employs an innovative approach to Flash caching that solves the storage I/O bottleneck using existing IT infrastructures.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/20/20110 comments
VMware knows that it has to stay in front of the very rapidly evolving management market if it is to keep its cutting-edge customers happy and maintain its leadership position in the private and public cloud space. Toward that end, it took the wraps off three product suites that use two magical management words: "simplify" and "automate."
The meat of this announcement is an enhanced version of VMware vCenter Operations, along with the unveiling of new VMware vFabric Application Management and VMware IT Business Management suites. The company says the two suites further separate VMware from outdated distributed physical systems and inefficient, silo-based management solutions, while enabling IT to broker services to its businesses.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/18/20116 comments
Jack Spencer is VP of operations and CIO of the non-profit American Society Health-System Pharmacists. Last Fall, his IBM Fast T 700 storage server, which had been in place for about five years and upgraded numerous times, started to fail during the registration period of one of the organization's national meetings that produce a large portion of its yearly operating budget.
"We had a lot of pain with IBM trying to get something done with that, and of course it turned into more of a sales call than any kind of a support thing, so it came to the point where we knew there had to be a better way," Spencer said.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/13/20112 comments
The Hyper-V tide is rising. Not rapidly, like a tsunami, but steadily, like a flood.
On the vendor side, Veeam just announced their support for the Microsoft hypervisor, and VMTurbo has done the same. Ditto OpenStack and Virsto Software. You can also include Emulex, Quest, Desktone and the OpenNebula open source project. The list goes on with Microsoft business partners Cisco, Dell, and HP. Other companies, such as Unidesk have announced future support, and the numbers will only grow.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/11/20117 comments
F5 Networks has been hot lately with its BIG-IP family of integrated application delivery services, so like a lot of companies that get on a roll, it decided to do a survey that combines self interest with questionable news value. The title of this survey sounds VMware-esque: The F5 Networks 2011 Journey to ITaaS Study.
What it basically says is users think the static datacenter model is evolving into the dynamic datacenter because users like selecting and self-provisioning IT services on demand, and they dislike dealing internally with problems related to complex applications and myriad user types.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/05/20115 comments
In the course of researching and writing my upcoming mainframe cloud story, I learned that there's a widespread belief that it's becoming more and more difficult to find workers with the skillset required to operate and maintain mainframe computers. That notion is substantiated in a 2010 survey sponsored by mainframe software maker CA Technologies, which claimed: "There's an emerging consensus that the IT industry as a whole simply isn't doing enough to promote mainframe database career opportunities to recent graduates. Just as importantly, a significant number of IT executives are looking to vendors to help them find the next generation of mainframe specialists."
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 10/03/20116 comments
Just in case you've been wondering about what's been going on with Kaviza since Citrix acquired the company on May 23 along with its VDI-in-a-box technology, I can tell you that the Kaviza name is gone, and the first Citrix-branded product based on Kaviza's technology is scheduled to be released by year-end.
In addition, VR blogger and former Kaviza COO Krishna Subramanian has been named VP of Marketing and Business Development for VDI-in-a-box, a position that will enable her to perform such tasks as distinguishing the differences between the missions of Kaviza-style vs. XenDesktop-style VDI in terms of how they relate to topics such as product messaging and licensing between the two desktop virtualization offerings.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/29/20113 comments
Beseiged as I am with the ongoing avalanche of press releases describing advanced cloud products, it was refreshing to do a briefing with SolarWinds, which is all about implementing that aging, commoditized, pick-and-shovel technology known as virtualization. The company is currently focusing on its new SolarWinds Virtualization Manager 4.0 product, the meat and potatoes of which consists of VMware-only tools for capacity management, VM sprawl control, performance monitoring, configuration management, and chargeback automation.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/23/20110 comments
The interesting thing about all the sniping going back and forth between VMware and Microsoft is that it's not really changing anybody's minds about whose products they're going to buy. One of the reasons for that is that in these kind of tit-for-tat fights, you really can't believe either side, because they are going to position their products in an unrealistically favorable light while doing just the opposite with their competitor's wares. I mean, it's really amazing how brazen these two companies have been recently in their condemnations of each other. They'll say anything.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/20/20111 comments
Yesterday, I was called by a PR guy I know who works with VMware's PR agency. He was returning my call to him in which I suggested having VMware write a piece addressing a very unfavorable white paper about VMware's vSphere pricing that Microsoft was circulating around the time of VMworld. The PR guy told me that it was not VMware's policy to respond to the attacks Microsoft is frequently making.
Sort of a stay-above-the-fray type of attitude. It made sense to me because one, there are so many people saying nasty things about VMware all the time that the company would have to hire a dedicated damage-control team just to answer all the naysayers--that's the way it goes when you dominate a market--and two, VMware is keeping an eye of Microsoft, but Paul Maritz is not losing any sleep over his former employer.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/15/20116 comments
We're a week removed from VMworld 2011, yet the momentum behind vSphere 5.0 continues to grow. The latest manifestation is VMware's update of its 76-page white paper, "Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 5.0." VMware makes it clear that while this latest version (vSphere 4.1 was covered in last November's rendition) was created to provide tips for many performance-related issues, "It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning and configuring your deployments."
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/13/20116 comments
Cisco has a bright new idea it modestly claims can save IT organizations up to tens of millions of dollars. So far, so good.
This new idea is actually a new corporate datacenter located down south in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, with what Cisco calls a "dual nature," meaning its primary purpose is application development, but it can turn on a dime and be transformed into a DR site for one or more of the company's global data centers. Now, onto the kicker.
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/08/20111 comments
HyTrust and CA weren't looking to form a tryst, but their customers insisted upon it. Seems customers on both sides were tired of obtaining and maintaining enterprise controls for their virtualized infrastructures separately from HyTrust and CA, so they told the two vendors to get their acts together.
Specifically, HyTrust Appliance resolve issues related to the enforcement of end-to-end security policies and compliance controls, while CA Access Control secures and governs privileged user access to critical systems. Put them together and the two companies claim the end result is a solution that "addresses control, security management and compliance in virtual and cloud environments from the infrastructure to the services and applications hosted in the private or public cloud."
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/06/20115 comments
Accompanied by his PR aide, VMWare VP Bogomil Balkansky quietly enters the interview room and slips easily into his seat at the end of the table. With his close-cropped hair, dark blue suit and natty tie, VMware's Vice President of Product Marketing sits briefly in silence as he pulls out the Aug.-Sept. issue of VR and begins reading aloud from my VMware cover story profile.
"Strong, stoic, self-contained, the company is like China, ignoring the critics, picking its spots and always advancing," he reads from the beginning of my piece. And then, "That is one of the best descriptions of VMware that I have ever seen."
More
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/01/20112 comments