Industry News

4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo Starts Today

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:10:00 EST

A round-up of the wide range of important issues and timely topics due to be discussed by over 130 industry experts at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, opening today at the Santa Clara Convention Center, November 2-4, 2009. From Building Scalable and Extensible RIAs in the Cloud to Yahoo! Cloud @ Internet Scale.

EMC Reports Third-Quarter 2009 Financial Results

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "I am very pleased with EMC's solid financial performance in a challenging economic climate. While remaining closer than ever to customers, we made additional progress optimizing our cost structure, expanded our product portfolio, strengthened our partner ecosystem and positioned EMC to capitalize on four of the higher-growth, multi-billion-dollar market opportunities around fully virtualized data centers, cloud computing, virtualized desktops and clients, and next-generation backup and recovery. I am extremely proud of the EMC and VMware people around the world who achieved these results."

ParaScale Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Computing Expo

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:15:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced that ParaScale, the leader in cloud storage software, was named "Bronze Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on November 2 - 4, 2009, Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California. The event is expected to attract over 1,500 developers, engineers, architects, IT managers, and hardware and software professionals of every stripe.

The Growth of Government Clouds

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:00:00 EDT

Now that the Obama administration has pegged cloud computing as the next evolution in government technology, it's important to understand the entire scope of the cloud computing spectrum from storage to security. Scott Ryan, CEO of Asankya, will look at the technology behind cloud acceleration and the methods to deployment within the federal space in a breakout session to be given at SYS-CON's 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo (GovITExpo).

Cloud-Cast Named to Amazon Web Services Solution Provider Program

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Focused on the growing market for cloud computing and virtualization services, Cloud-Cast delivers cloud computing solutions to government and commercial markets. Leveraging service providers such as AWS, Cloud-Cast offers a full range of cloud computing implementation services, including leveraging AWS for disaster recovery purposes, dynamic provisioning of web farms and offloading high-power compute applications to the cloud framework.

Deputy CIO of the CIA to Keynote 1st Annual GovIT Expo

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announces that Jill Tummler Singer, Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will be delivering the opening keynote at the 1st Annual Government Conference & Expo (www.GovITExpo.com) on October 6th in Washington DC. Ms Singer was appointed in November 2006 and is responsible for ensuring CIA has the information, technology, and infrastructure necessary to effectively execute its missions. Prior to her appointment as Deputy CIO, Ms. Singer served as the Director of the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service (DTS), United States Department of State, and was responsible for global network services to US foreign missions.

SYS-CON.TV: Cloud Computing Expo Power Panel

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EDT

With an ever-increasing number of companies now buying computing, storage, and networking power as they need it from the cloud, SYS-CON.TV recently invited four leading industry thought leaders to discuss how Cloud Computing brings the economics of the Web to Enterprise IT and where the move to the cloud will take the industry overall. The participants are Amazon.com VP & CTO, Werner Vogels; Rackspace CTO, John Engates; Booz Allen Hamilton Principal, Rod Fontecilla; and Sun's CTO of Global Sales & Services, Hal Stern.

Kace Spiffs Up its Application Virtualization

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:45:00 EDT

Kace claims to have elbowed its way to the forefront of application virtualization innovation with the latest version of its Virtual Kontainers technology, its way of handling the application lifecycle. It’s only been in the application virtualization business a few months and the field is notorious for its high cost and complexity but Kace CTO Marty Kacin says that notion is a misconception – or at least it is with Kace’s stuff.

VMware Announces Broad Customer Adoption of VMware View

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EDT

VMware has announced broad customer adoption of VMware View, a desktop virtualization solution. With more than 1 million seats estimated across 7,000 customers, VMware View is establishing itself as the standard of choice to centralize desktop management, lower costs and deliver rich, personalized user experiences. VMware View(TM) has been widely adopted across industries -- including financial services, healthcare, education, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and the public sector. In addition, organizations are accelerating large scale deployments across broader use cases as they may realize strong total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of $600 or more per end user in less than six months.

Dell Has Some Good News & Some Bad News for Wall Street

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:30:00 EDT

Ahead of a meeting with analysts Tuesday Dell said that year-over-year demand for its wares seems to have stabilized, and that it expects to report a slight sequential revenue increase in its fiscal second quarter, which ends July 31. That's the good news. However it's also anticipating a "modest decline" in gross margins, because of higher component costs, competitive pricing, and an unfavorable mix of product and business-segment demand. That's the bad news.

VMware Delivers New Products

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EDT

VMware Monday was set to announce two new products well as a major release of its vCenter Lab Manager 4. The new products are vCenter AppSpeed, derived from VMware’s acquisition of Beehive, and Chargeback, developed in-house. According to Raghu Raghuram, general manager of VMware’s server business unit, “If the first wave of the virtualization revolution was about reducing capital expenditures, the next is innovative virtualization management capabilities that allow IT to extricate itself from mundane tasks, become more productive, and reduce IT operating costs.” The new vCenter products are supposed to provide greater efficiency in the data center, more control over service levels and greater flexibility.

Kace Tears Down Barriers to App Virtualization

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Kace claims it has torn down the barriers to application virtualization. Aside from price that largely means complexity, which in turn means it’s largely a boon to administrators.

AMD Plants Spin Out

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:00:00 EST

AMD, which closed its long-sought manufacturing spin-out deal on Monday, has tapped Bruce Claflin to be chairman of its board. Claflin replaces Hector Ruiz, who retired to chair the spun-off Foundry Company.

Virtualization Security: VMware Crosses the Rubicon

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:43:00 EST

VMware has made a stunning announcement when it comes to virtualization security. The question now is: will it awaken the security industry?

The Lights Flicker at Dell

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:00:00 EST

Dell’s earnings were down 48% to $351 million, 18 cents a share, on revenues down 16% to $13.4 billion and units down 12% in the January quarter, three of the single worst months since PCs were invented. Dell’s gross margin dropped from 18.7% to 17.2%.

Virtualization Wars: Citrix Makes Bomb Run on VMware

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST

Citrix is making an all-out strategic strike on VMware. It’s going to stop selling XenServer 5 – the open source virtual infrastructure that it’s added a bunch of proprietary features to since it acquired XenSource last year – and offer it to all comers for free. It says VMware sells the equivalent technology for $50,000 for a 10-server environment.

Citrix XenApp Now Runs in the EC2 Cloud

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST

Apps from the Cloud frequently means limited function browser based web apps that may be OK for personal use but don’t cut it in the business world. Citrix as an industry leader delivering full featured enterprise windows apps to business has now enabled the Cloud to provide the delivery system. As a public demonstration Citrix has posted a pre-built XenApp Server in Amazon’s Xen based EC2 offering.

Sun Announces Energy-Efficient Disk Arrays

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:00:00 EST

Sun Microsystems has announced the expansion of its disk storage portfolio with two new high-performance disk storage arrays that enable customers to consolidate workloads within the same data center footprint for greater efficiency. The new Sun Storage 6580 and 6780 modular arrays complement a range of server architectures, including Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 systems running the Solaris Operating System. The Sun Storage 6580 and 6780 Arrays help enterprise customers upgrade their storage infrastructure to scale storage needs within the same power and space envelope. The new Sun Storage 6580 and 6780 arrays are ideal for midrange and high-end enterprise and throughput-intensive workloads that target database and enterprise-email applications and add enterprise management tools at no cost through the Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager software. Customers have already started to leverage Sun’s upgrade and trade-in programs, which uncover hidden equity in a customer’s current IT infrastructure by giving trade-up allowances for both Sun and competitor products. New Storage Arrays Bring Value, Investment Protection to the Market: Sun Storage 6580 Array: Offers improved response time remains versus previous generations; includes these product specifications: up to 256 disks (256 TB), eight 4Gb FC host ports, 8GB Cache, 16 expansion trays per controller, an intermix of SATA and FC drives and support of RAID 6. Sun Storage 6780 Array: Positioned above the Sun Storage 6500 line, the Sun Storage 6780 offers two times the IOPS and four times the throughput performance over the 6500 class of arrays. Product specifications include up to 448 disks (448 TB), eight or 16 4Gb FC host ports, 16GB cache, 28 expansion trays per controller, an intermix of SATA and FC drives and support of RAID 6.

Cloud Computing & Virtualization - IT's Top Two Topics

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:59:00 EST

Another confirmation that virtualization, cloud computing and service-based application delivery is set to form an integral part of software application development infrastructures in the decade to come is evident from the shape of an IT event in Las Vegas, Nevada, that starts today. Adrian Bridgwater previews the event in this exclusive report for SYS-CON's Virtualization Journal.

JumpBox Releases Open Source Virtual Appliances

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:00:00 EST

JumpBox has announced the release of 38 Open Source applications to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. The release enables server application deployment, configuration, and management almost completely independent of any user hardware. JumpBox offers small to mid-sized organizations a library of Open Source applications packaged as pre-built, pre-configured virtual appliances through JumpBox Open, its annual subscription service. Public Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for twelve JumpBox applications, including Ruby on Rails

Firstservis to Offer Cloud Computing Solutions Powered by 3Tera’s AppLogic

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:15:00 EST

Firstservis and 3Tera have announced that 3Tera has chosen Firstservis as the first reseller and distributor of 3Tera's AppLogic cloud computing platform for Australia and New Zealand. Beginning immediately, Firstservis will resell, support and offer cloud computing solutions and services using 3Tera's AppLogic. "Firstservis' approach to IT is very compatible with 3Tera's vision and market goals," said Bert Armijo, senior vice-president, Sales, Marketing and Product Management, 3Tera, Inc. "Their unique knowledge of the Australian IT market and vast consulting experience with organizations of all sizes makes Firstservis a great partner to educate and deliver cloud computing based solutions in the region.

Cloud Envelops Exchange & SharePoint

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:15:00 EST

Microsoft on Monday pushed multi-tenant SaaS versions of Exchange and SharePoint out of the beta nest. Some 7,000 concerns participated in the beta. Now the stuff’s available to all comers. Exchange Online will cost $10 per user a month; SharePoint Online will cost $7.25. Eventually a browser-only Exchange/SharePoint combo will go for $3 and a Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) with e-mail, instant messaging, web conferencing and SharePoint for $15. The IM component is still missing.

Business.com Announces Open Source CloudBase at 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST

Business.com has announced the availability of CloudBase, a high-performance data warehouse system that scales horizontally on commodity hardware or a cloud computing network. Built on top of a map-reduce architecture, this technology enables business analysts using ANSI SQL to directly query large-scale log files arising in web site, telecommunications or IT operations. Now even small businesses will be able to quickly analyze log data without the cost and complexity of maintaining large relational database management system (RDBMS) clusters.

rPath Announces Cloud-Based Support at SYS-CON's Virtualization and Cloud Computing Conference

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:30:00 EST

rPath has announced support for the Ubuntu and CentOS Linux operating systems as part of rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform. rBuilder is the category-defining build and release management system for creating virtual appliances and application images. The rPath Lifecycle Management Platform extends rBuilder with a comprehensive system for controlling the cost, complexity and risk of deploying, managing and maintaining application images in virtualized and cloud-based environments.

EMC Announces Data Protection Software at SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

EMC has announced the newest versions of data protection software. These new updates are part of integrated solutions that meet specific data protection requirements for analysis and reporting, backup for Microsoft and VMware virtual environments, data de-duplication and replication, helping customers slow data growth, reduce capacity and lower total cost of operations. The products with new and expanded capabilities include: EMC Data Protection Advisor– The next-generation of EMC Backup Advisor, providing proactive analysis and reporting software that helps users make the right decisions at the right cost, faster. Now new features include support for VMware and EMC Celerra unified storage systems, in addition to expanded support of EMC Avamar, and Data Domain platforms.

eXludus Joins HP Multi-Core Optimization Program

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:15:00 EST

eXludus has announced that it has joined the HP Multi-Core Optimization Program. System processor core counts, and associated parallel processing capacity, are increasing. However, most applications are serial designs not capable of effectively using this parallel computing capacity now available to them. Re-writing applications to take full advantage of today’s multi-core systems is a difficult, time-consuming and a costly process. This situation has created a major application performance challenge for the industry. eXludus’ MultiCore Optimizer software addresses the parallel processor/serial application disconnect by inserting an intelligent resource allocation middleware layer between the applications and the operating system that allows unmodified applications to better leverage multi-core system potential based on resource needs.

SYS-CON Webcast - The Blackberry Technical Webcast Series

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

The BlackBerryR Technical Webcast Series is designed to help BlackBerry administrators better manage and leverage the capabilities of their BlackBerry solution. Each webcast is packed with detailed technical information, covering topics that are relevant to you. Our on-demand webcasts include: Troubleshooting the BlackBerryR Enterprise Solution, Troubleshooting Enterprise Activation, Troubleshooting Messaging Delays, What is provisioning, and Managing Application Push in the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution.

Emulex FCoE CNAs Compatible with IBM System x Servers

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

Emulex has announced that its LightPulse LP21000 family of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) have been tested and found to be compatible for use with IBM Systems x3650(7979), x3655(7943) and x3755(7163) series servers. Emulex CNAs enable the consolidation of server I/O, allowing IBM customers to reduce the number of network interface cards and cables used by servers by as much as 50 percent, which in turn helps lower power and cooling costs.

SYS-CON Webcast - BlackBerry Technical Seminar

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:00:00 EST

The BlackBerry Technical Seminar is back this fall with breakthrough new sessions you won’t want to miss! Managing and extending applications to your mobile users, overcoming development hurdles; and leveraging mobile technology to create new opportunities for your business – if it’s about getting the most from your BlackBerry solution, you’ll find it at the BlackBerry Technical Seminar. This free online event gives you the opportunity to build your BlackBerry solution administrator and developer knowledge without ever leaving your desk.

AMD and Red Hat Demonstrate Live Migration of Virtual Machines

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:15:00 EST

AMD, in collaboration with Red Hat, have demonstrated the “live migration” of a virtual machine across vendor platforms. Live migration enables the movement of running virtual machines from one physical server to another without disrupting service to the end user, something that, till now, has only been demonstrated across systems based on one vendor’s platforms. The live migration demonstration moves a live VM from an dual socket Intel Xeon DP Quad Core E5420-based system to a system based on the forthcoming 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, utilizing Red Hat’s high-performance open source virtualization software.

Expert Server Group Offers Virtualization to SMBs

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:30:00 EST

Expert Server Group has announced the availability of VIBE (Virtualization In-a-Box Environment) for Small and Medium Businesses. VIBE is a preconfigured HP/VMware solution specifically designed for SMBs enabling them to quickly realize the cost-saving advantages of virtualization by easily automating up to 30 Virtual Machines in approximately 90 minutes. “Virtualization continues to be a growing trend in the data center as SMBs look to reduce their footprint, solve problems relating to older hardware, and improve the Return on their IT Investment (ROI),” said Doug Weisberg, President of Expert Server Group.

Level Platforms Offers MSPs Full Virtualization Support

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:45:00 EST

LPI Level Platforms has announced support for virtualized environments including virtual servers, LANs, storage, and desktops. Using Managed Workplace, solution providers can deliver managed services support for all key virtualization products including Microsoft HyperV and Virtual Server, VMware, Citrix XenServer,Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server and Windows Terminal Server. This enables solution providers to deliver full managed services support for virtual environments.

HP Announces a Software and Hardware Storage Virtualization Solution

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:45:00 EST

HP has announced a software and hardware storage virtualization solution that enables enterprises to improve productivity, simplify operations and achieve lower total cost of ownership for their storage-area network environments. Part of HP's growing portfolio of storage virtualization solutions, the new HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform improves the efficiency and simplifies the management of heterogeneous midrange storage arrays. HP SVSP is a network-based storage platform that pools capacity across HP and non-HP storage hardware.

Layered Technologies Brings 3Tera's AppLogic Cloud Computing Solution for Windows to the Grid

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:45:00 EST

Layered Technologies has announced it will give enterprise customers the option of transferring their Microsoft Windows operating system (Windows OS) environment to an AppLogic-based cloud computing solution. Layered Tech will use 3Tera's AppLogicT 2.4 to enable customers to run their Windows OS platform in a virtual computing environment, which means customers will have the same high-availability as their dedicated physical servers but with far more scalability, all for a fraction of the cost.

eXludus Technologies and Univa UD Announce Technology Agreement

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:45:00 EST

eXludus Technologies has announced a technology agreement with Univa UD. Through this agreement, MultiCore Optimizer software functionalities will be integrated with UniCluster software to create an enhanced product offering. UniCluster, which simplifies the deployment, configuration and management of clusters, will offer added capability to optimize utilization of multi-core systems. Multi-core systems provide parallel processing capacity, but most applications are serial designs incapable of fully leveraging this potential.

VMware Helps the City of Calgary Increase Virtualization Application Availability

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST

VMware has announced that The City of Calgary has deployed VMware's management and virtualization suite, VMware Infrastructure 3. With VMware, The City is containing spiraling IT costs, accelerating the development of new online services for its one million residents, and helping ensure application availability for The City's 32 business units, such as the Calgary Fire Department, Emergency Medical Services, Finance & Supply, and Water Services. Before virtualizing its application environment, The City of Calgary had been adding nearly 80 new physical servers each year in its datacenter to handle the ever-increasing volume of electronic data needed to support city operations.

PERC Ultra SMP Ported To RedHawk Linux

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:15:00 EDT

Aonix has announced the release of PERC Ultra SMP with support for Concurrent’s RedHawk real-time Linux and associated NightStar advanced Linux debugging and analysis tools. PERC Ultra, Aonix’s flagship product, targets the same time-critical applications such as simulation and training, data acquisition, imaging, and process control that RedHawk currently serves. PERC Ultra SMP, a variant of the Aonix family of deterministic and hard real-time virtual machines and Java development tools, provides new ability to execute real-time applications effectively in multi-processor and multi-core systems.

Virtualization Expo: Low-Hanging Virtual Fruit Drying Up: IDC

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:12:00 EDT

The virtualization market is slowing according to IDC. It says growth in virtualization licenses shipped in Q2 – before the virtual bottom fell out of the global economy – increased only 53% year-over-year compared to 72% just the quarter before. Analyst Brett Waldman says that means that the “market is showing early signs of maturation” and that “high-volume consolidation opportunities – the low-hanging fruit in the x86 server virtualization market – is starting to dry up. This is, in turn, resulting in smaller deals overall.” IDC’s numbers say new virtualized server shipments worldwide increased 52% year-over-year in Q2 compared to 70% in Q1.

Microsoft’s VMM RTMs

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:21:00 EDT

Microsoft’s shiny new Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) now wending its way to market – it’s RTM’d and should be available the first of November – will cost $1,304 to start, about a third of what VMware’s VirtualCenter costs. It can manage both Hyper-V and VMware environments and physical as well as virtual machines. Automated management is also possible with certain servers.

VMware Provides Windows Virtual Infrastructure

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:45:00 EDT

VMware has announced that Nationwide Services has deployed VMware’s management and virtualization suite, VMware Infrastructure 3, to provide a platform for Nationwide’s Windows application environment. Nationwide Services is a unit of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. Nationwide initially deployed VMware Infrastructure to reverse the effects of server sprawl that had pushed the company’s datacenter to the edge of its power and space limitations.