Desktop virtualization is a new set of technologies. You can tell this because even the words we use to describe things frequently cause more confusion than they communicate -- we do not have a generally accepted terminology yet. The reality is that all new technologies go through this phase. Realistically, how could we have words to describe things that have not existed before?
Over time, the terminology matures and ultimately a set of best practices emerge that describe how the technology is best used. Championing clarity in these confusing times has long been a goal of mine. Consequently, I was delighted when, at the end of last year, a significant source of confusion disappeared. Here is what changed.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/27/20090 comments
Don't you just love hearing predictions about what's going to happen 10, 15 or 20 years from now? As if we can figure out what's going come down the chute next Tuesday in the current economic climate. Technology acceleration is full of imponderables and progress is often marked by quantum leaps ... events that can change the game enormously in a relatively short span of time. Back in the day, no one, and I mean no one, predicted the full sets of impacts that the Internet would have on business, culture and just everyday life.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/26/20090 comments
I had an insightful discussion yesterday with Stuart Robinson over at Teradici. I wanted to speak with the company for a feature I’m working on about its
partnership with VMware
, announced at VMworld back in September. The discussion led me down some of the slightly tortuous technology pathways associated with display protocols. (This stuff is not for the faint of heart and I'm as much of a gearhead as the next guy.)
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/21/20091 comments
I feel like a stuck CD harping on management tools as much as I have been this year but, let's face it -- it's where a lot of the real action is in virtualization right now and through 2009. The trouble with making VMs is that it's a little too easy. Tarkan Maner, CEO of Wyse, says that he has run into plenty of CIOs that just don't get the need for a full, top-down planning approach to virtualization.
Too often the approach is: Let's take a few of our IT guys and dub them the VM team while saying "go forth and virtualize." Mark Bowker from analyst firm ESG describes this trend as "virtualize first, optimize later." In any event, here's some good survey data from IDC on which management tools are getting the most traction in IT shops these days. In order of usage, they are:
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/19/20091 comments
Everybody's making predictions so I thought I'd jump into the fray. When I was an analyst, cranking out predictions this time every year was part of the job so it still seems second nature. So here's my two cents:
- Diane Greene will resurface with a new company that will be focused on virtualization management and automation. (Ok I had a little inside info to help me out with this one, but the management piece is very much my own bit of crystal ball gazing.)
- There will be increasing friction between VMware and partners over systems management as the company moves ahead aggressively to develop additional management tool sets and capabilities to support the roll out of VDC-OS products and the so called dynamic data center.
- HP and/or IBM will acquire a virtualization management startup this year. There are a rather impressive number of management startups in the market right now. (We've been profiling a few here on the Web site such as Bluestripe Software and Netuitive)
- Citrix will begin to steal market share from VMware in VDI. This won't be a coup so much as a slow steady erosion as Citrix starts looking to convert some of its XenApp base to more comprehensive XenDesktop solutions. Citrix isn't interested in cannibalizing its XenApp business, a key element in its strong desktop franchise and a business that many other key products (such as Netscaler) depend on.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/18/20090 comments
Analyst Laura DiDio used to cover virtualization for the Yankee group but now has her own outfit,
ITIC
. (Fun fact about Laura: At one point in her career, she was an on-camera reporter for CNN). ITIC and
Sunbelt Software
recently published the results of a joint survey that covered (among other things) application virtualization. The survey methodology involved tapping C-level executives and admins at 700 companies with 85 percent of responses coming from North America. It was followed up by customer interviews for validation.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/14/20090 comments
When
Tarkan Maner
, President and CEO of Wyse, and Jeff McNaught CMO, stopped by our offices in Framingham to chat, they mentioned a very interesting deal the company recently completed with France Telecom. Citrix is also involved with its XenDesktop product.
Basically FT is going to provide desktop as a service using thin clients and targeting the SMB market (e.g. law firms and accounting firms with 100 or fewer employees). Maner also told us that Wyse has got something going with Google and the Aussie carrier Telstra on the consumer side but pointed out that activity here in the U.S. has been sluggish by comparison.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/12/20095 comments
The conventional wisdom about the impact of the economy on virtualization is that companies will being looking to cut costs and therefore will turn to server virtualization because of an immediate and straighforward ROI hit. But not so fast, says analyst Rachel Chalmers of the
451 Group
. In a recent report, Chalmers points out that a lot of the low hanging fruit has already been picked off, at least in terms of the Fortune 500. Going downstream to the SMB level, the ROI won't be quite as easy to realize.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/11/20090 comments
I'm just going to make a quick mention of this because, hey, it's Microsoft. Redmond has announced a deal with Marathon, a Massachusetts-based company that provides fault tolerant, high availability software for Windows Server environments and competes with Stratus. In 2007 the company started going after the market for virtual servers and now also supports Citrix XenServer. The deal is going to allow Marathon to resell Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 products. Both companies will also work more closely together to optimize customer solutions that go after the main value prop for FT, reducing downtime and data loss. (Up until now, the company hasn't really had a formal relationship with Redmond, interestingly enough.)
Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/09/20090 comments
Apple has reportedly now become the world's third largest mobile phone maker behind Nokia and Samsung. It's a rather amazing and meteoric rise and one of the best examples I know of the powerful and paradigm-shattering convergence of IT and telecom. But did you know that you can now use your iPhone to manage a virtualized environment?
Integrien is a startup company that competes with Netuitive, BMC and, to a lesser extent, Akorri. Like Netuitive, the company offers analytics software that baselines and correlates the performance of virtual and physical machines, performs root cause analysis, predicts performance degradations and, depending on the results, sends alerts to an IT admin. According to vice president of sales and marketing Steve Henning, this capability avoids what he says is an all too frequent occurrence: the all-hands bridge call involving different siloed groups. When database, network, server or application server admins get on calls like this, Henning says it often involves more fingerpointing than actual problem-solving.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/06/20092 comments
VMworld is currently the virtualization industry's vendor and customer magnet and must-attend show. Although vendor-sponsored, VMworld encourages competitors to attend and, on that basis, has become the industry's defacto main event. But in the increasingly competitive world of virtualization, that may be changing.
In a recent blog, Simon Crosby, high-profile Citrix CTO and spokesman, explains how and why the company has thrown down the proverbial gauntlet and decided to go after VMware’s longstanding franchise. Basically, Synergy -- to be held in Las Vegas on May 4 -- will include Virtualization Congress 2009, an independent virtualization conference run by virtualization.info. The event is also aligned with Network World Live!
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 01/05/20090 comments
Virtual Iron
has had some problems with management turnover but it doesn’t seem to have affected sales. I recently spoke with
CEO Ed Walsh
about what kinds of results they've been having and future plans. In early December, Virtual Iron announced an 130 percent increase in third quarter revenues over last year. It also announced expansion of its partner ecosystem, which currently includes Lifeboat, Zycko, Promark, Lefthand Networks (HP) and the IBM New Enterprise Data Center Alliance. The same release also said that Tech Validate, an independent third party, surveyed more than 400 Virtual Iron customers and more than half of respondents cited fullness of feature set, ease of deployment, quality of technical support and training and affordable price as key selection criteria.
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Posted by Tom Valovic on 12/29/20080 comments